This page is geared for middle school students looking for information on schoolwork, research papers, and for their own interests.
Tip One:
Use Boolean operators. Boolean operators are the words AND, OR, and NOT (always in all capital letters). They are extremely useful when researching a vague topic like a country or anything else for that matter. On some search engines when you type in the country "China" you will receive information on plates, cups, and dishes and not the country because China is also a type of dishes.
AND will limit your search, requiring all words that appear in the site or document. Vietnam AND war is an example of when to use this Boolean operator.
OR is used to catch similar words or information on both words. Harley Davidson OR motorcycle is example of when either or both of the keywords are wanted and is good to use when what you are looking for has more then one name.
NOT is used to eliminate possibilities that you suspect will cause problems in your results. Cars NOT trucks is an example of when you want information on cars and no information on trucks.
Tip Two:
By using quotation marks("") around the words you limit the search to that phrase and in that order. This is very helpful when looking for information on a person or a company (i.e. "Martin Luther King" this would limit the search just to Martin Luther King and you would receive only information on him and his peace movement.)
Tip Three:
Use mega search tools. Mega search tools offer a search of many search engines in one website. The best ones are listed below:
Dogpile offers one stop information listing the results by the many search engines they use and is by far the best way to research anything.
Ask Jeeves is a natural language search engine geared for its users ease where you ask the butler, Jeeves, your questions. Plus there's a link for younger users and their questions.
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