Power searching can be confusing to the newbie and this following piece is a good place to start with regard to making it happen for you.

Search engines have a variety of ways for you to refine and control your searches. Some of them offer menu systems for this. Others require you to use special commands as part of your query.

For most people, the basic commands covered on the Search Engine Math page will be sufficient. I encourage you to read the search engine math page first. Get comfortable using the commands that are described. If you need more power after that, then review the other options on this page.

Boolean commands are NOT shown on this page. See the separate Boolean Searching page for information about these. If you don’t know what Boolean commands are, don’t worry about reading the page on these commands. You probably don’t need them.

Not every power searching command is shown on this page, only the main ones that are most likely to be used. Read the help files at each search engine for more detailed coverage about what they offer…. SearchEngineWatch