Keys to Successful Searching

by MissM

I have two young male children and am gaining experience with more and more scratches, bites, bruises than I thought possible, but.... as a result I did this search. I was wondering if fleas had got the boys, so I went to my favorite Search engine

www.google.com and entered <flea bites> and got 13600 results.
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=flea+bites
When I enclosed the phrase in quotes <"flea bites"> the total results dropped to 4340 results.
Then I added one more word <"flea bites" people>
2100 results
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22flea+bites%22+people
By putting a "-" in front of a word, it removes hits that include that word or phrase, so.... I took out the animal flea bites <"flea bites" people -animal> and netted 1070 results
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22flea+bites%22+people+%2Danimal
I realized that I wanted to know what the flea bites on people, not animal pictures looked like ... so typed in <"flea bites" people -animal pictures > and have wittled it down to 141 results.
Then I narrow it down even more <"flea bites" "people pictures" -animal> and ended up with 54 results.
Then you can start looking through the pages.

We started with 13 thousand six hundred hits, and pared it down to a manageable 54, that's a 99.7% decrease in useful results to the original question. Worth thinking about quotation marks and things, eh?