Module 5: East Los Angeles College Library Online Tutorial

Tips for Better Search Results

Tips	Examples
Be specific • Use nouns and unique words • Put the most important words first • Use multiple terms when possible	If you were interested in "bias in newspapers" you could search for: newspapers bias slant censorship journalism
Use quotes around phrases so the search engine will search for the words as a phrase, not as separate words.	To look for a phrase, rather than search the individual words in the phrase, use quotes around it: "world health organization"
Use a plus sign + in front of a word or a phrase to require it to be in the matching documents.	Using a plus sign helps to narrow down a search for a common word like "nutrition." For example: nutrition +vegetarian
Use a minus sign - in front of a word to exclude any search results containing that word.	If you wanted pages on greyhound dogs but not Greyhound Bus Line, you can prevent "bus" from being searched: greyhound -bus
Use lower case letters to find words that are either lower or upper case	japanese internment "world war ii"
Use parentheses around terms that are alike. Enter connectors in capital letters	(adolescents OR teenagers) AND health
Select an appropriate web search tool. Remember that you can choose from a variety of search options.	subject directories search engines metasearch engines