Home > Writing Advice & Resources > Using Search Profitably

Using Search Profitably

Updated Feb 2006
No matter what the topic, chances are you can find it on the Internet. However, as the information haystack gets bigger, finding that crucial needle of data can become a frustrating challenge. Below are some simple tips for finding what you want.

The Basics of Search

When you type keywords into a search engine, you’re given a list of sites that the search engine thinks are relevant to your query. The search engine puts the sites that it considers to be most relevant at the top of the list.

Every search engine uses a different combination of methods to analyse and rank sites. Understanding this simple fact can go a long way towards helping you use search effectively.

Over the last year, many businesspeople have told me they “must be doing it wrong” when they try to search the web, because they can never find what they need. When I ask which search engine they’re using, the answer is, almost invariably, “Google”.

All Search Engines are NOT Created Equal

Although Google has its strengths, it may not be the best search engine for your needs. To find out why, we have to cover a bit of history.

In November 2003, Google made a major change to its ranking methods. As a result, many commercial sites disappeared from the top-ranked spots for their relevant keywords. There are many theories about why Google made this change. Whatever the reason, Google searches now tend to give a heavy preference to websites owned by organizations and governments. Fine—if that’s what you’re looking for. If not, you may have trouble finding what you want.

Google also tends to give high rankings to directory sites—sites that are lists of links about a given topic or topics. Directories can be helpful. The problem, however, is that many links from search results into directories do not take you to the exact information you wanted. Instead, they leave you hunting around through layers of irrelevant directory pages—and this is often the point where people give up and decide they “must be doing it wrong”. Truth is, they aren’t doing it wrong. The technology is doing it wrong.

Another reason for Google’s information bias is that it relies on listings from a directory called DMOZ. DMOZ is human-edited, which means that you must apply to have a human being review your site and decide if it “makes the cut”. Tales abound of perfectly good business websites being rejected by DMOZ, which then cripples their rankings in Google.

If Google is not giving you the results you need, the solution is simple: try another search engine. Yahoo and the new MSN search often pull up very different result lists than Google.

Another search engine that’s underrated, but often very good, is search.com. It assembles results from a variety of other engines, and usually finds the relevant material fairly quickly.

Homing in on What You Want

One trick for getting the information that you want is to add a location word to your search. For example, if you’re looking for a drywaller in Edmonton, type: drywall Edmonton. Adding the word “Edmonton” reduces the importance of pages that don’t contain this word, so the Edmonton drywallers are more likely to float to the top of your search. Unfortunately, when you do this, local sites that have omitted the word “Edmonton” may be missed. As an alternative, some search engines have launched what they call “local search”; it’s one more way to search for local businesses and information.

One final tip: sponsored (paid) search listings are often less relevant than the natural (free) listings. In some search engines, a sponsored listing will be displayed even though it contains only one word out of a target keyphrase. For example, if you type: gardening trends, you may see paid listings for the keyword “trends”, but not related to gardening. By contrast, the top natural search results will almost certainly contain both words. (If you specifically want sites where the words occur together, place the search phrase inside quotation marks, e.g. “gardening trends”. This will refine the natural search results, but may not affect sponsored listings.)

The above simple tips should help you to make better use of the fantactic information resources on the Internet. Happy searching!