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Were you good at playing Hide n’ Seek as a child? If you were you probably knew intuitively how to do good searches. Maybe you understood the nature of the hide-ers and where they were likely to be. Or you could quickly eliminate all the places the other kids would NOT go to hide, and focus on checking the likely places.

One thing I think I’ve learned to do better in the last year or so of my seven years online is how to do more effective searches. I seem to enjoy it more too, now that I have got better at it.

I use the Firefox browser which has a Google search bar at the top right, and there is a bigger one on the start page. You can also install the Google search bar on your other browsers at no cost. It only takes a couple of minutes.

There are, of course, hundreds of search engines, and you might have another favourite. Google has an excellent reputation and is handy, so I reach for that first, but I also have SearchIt! on my quick access browser bar, and whenever I need to do a more refined, special search, I can open that in a second.

But if no one is offering courses in doing searches, how does one get the knack?

By trial and error - in my case. So let me save you some time with helpful tips.

1. Make sure you have a search bar very hand. If not, install one like Google, (just visit their site, click some links, and it will come in and make itself to home on your computer), or visit the SearchIt! , and drag the URL to your browser’s button bar.

2. Spend a few hours trying out searches. Try putting your own name in that blank search box. You might be surprised to discover some of your friends have mentioned you on their sites! Try putting down your favourite hobbies. You’ll wander off as you click on links and explore all kinds of fun sites in that genre. You’ll see pictures and read info, and… oh, you’ll have a great time! Just keep coming back to the results page and click another link.

Are you about to buy something? Put that item into the search bar and see if you might get it cheaper some place, by ordering it online. I will click about six or seven links, with a right-click of my mouse, and then on the fly up menu I click “open another tab.” Then I visit them one after another and compare prices, and discoveries.

3. As you’ve done those searches, you will have noticed that some words brought up oodles of links, and some not so many, or none. It’s time to develop skill in how you choose the keywords you put in the blank.
- try different spellings eg. jewellery, jewelry,
- try putting quotations marks around a phrase, eg. “antique canning jars”
- when I saw that most of the sites for the jars search were using the term “fruit jars” - I did another search using that term, and found many more sites.
- use operator symbols like +, or, not. (study up on how and when to use each)
- when you’d like a picture, click on images to search the net only for those
(same with groups, or news)
- check out and try the Advanced Search form, and read the Advanced search tips page every once in a while. You’ll learn a lot from that.

Remember, no one is charging you for the amount of time you use to search. It’s all a question of how diligent you want to be. If you’ve got the time, go for it. Eventually, you’ll get so skilled, that it won’t take but a few minutes for many common searches.

4. Make notes. After a couple of hours, or when you want to tell someone later what you found, you’ll have a hard time remembering which site had what. I keep my text editor program open all the time, and as I’m making discoveries, I’ll highlight and copy paste the url and the key bits of info into a blank document. Draw a line, and then put down the next. Days and weeks later, I can pull up that document and go back to exactly the place where I found something.

5. When you really want to research a topic still more thoroughly, try out SearchIt! That will throw up some extra windows on you, and you’ll need to do a few more clicks, but you can choose from 19 Search categories in Step 1. Depending on your category choice, your Step 2 choices can be anywhere from half a dozen to more than a dozen search types. And again, depending on your choices, you are allowed to put in one or two search terms or phrases in Steps 3 and 4.

It looks complicated at first, but as you test and play with it, you’ll be amazed at the refined searches you can do. SearchIt! gets into corners of the net that you would never think of looking on your own! It’s originally designed to help those who are planning a new web site, but you can adapt it for anything and everything else you have a mind to.

Whether you are trying to run a business online, or simply for your own pleasure and curiosity, you are doing yourself a huge favour if you learn to do good searches.