When you construct a search, you are often looking for two or more words to be in a sentence one right after the other.  To find these words in the right order you want to use phrase searching.  In many search engines, phrase searching is accomplished by putting quotation marks (“ “) around the words you want to appear together in your results.  The quotation marks around the words mean to search for an exact phrase.  You will have fewer results, but only the Web pages that contain the exact phrase.

If you want to find the one site Google thinks is the “best,” for the search term used click the I’m Feeling Lucky button.

Boolean operators, such as AND, OR, and AND NOT, (always use all CAPITAL LETTERS), let you expand, narrow, or restrict your searches.  They act as commands to the search engine by connecting keywords and phrases it uses to retrieve the results you want.  Some search engines allow Boolean searching on the basic search page, but some allow it only on the advanced search page.  Or, they may not use the English words AND or NOT, but may allow the plus sign (+) or the minus sign (-) instead.  There must be a space in front of the plus or minus sign but no space between it and the term it is connecting to the first term.  Whenever you connect keywords in your search with AND or +, you are telling the search engine that both of the keywords must be on every Web page.  Each AND or + added to your search query further narrows the search results to fewer pages.  Examples: cats AND dogs, cats +dogs, dogs AND NOT wild dogs, dogs –wild dogs, “wind energy” AND “wind mills”, “wind energy” OR “wind turbines” OR “wind mills”.

anywho.com, to find people, business, toll-free numbers, and maps.

NewsDirectory.com / MagPortal.com / FindArticles.com, allows you to search many online magazine databases.