Here's the good news - you can find just about anything online! Knowledge, news, city groups, star wars games, harley associations, bay area classifieds, soap opera updates, football scores, care and feeding of carnivorous plants, mental math, pez collecting resources, manhole museums, ....

Here's the better news - it's as easy to zero in on your quarry as it is to unwrap an exciting present by simply grabbing a paper edge and ripping in the down direction!

And here's the best news - anyone can learn. Anyone! I know. My colleague has literally taught thousands of people to utilize these techniques with great success!

With that, let's dive into:

Before You Begin - Today's Word of the Day Is...

Here is the best tip I can give regarding finding things online: Precision is the key when searching on the Internet..

Consider the following.

Sites like Yahoo and Google and MSN have more than 15 billion items in their index! That's 15 billion, as in, not 15 hundred, 15 BILLION. That number is bigger than the population of the entire earth!

So there is a potenially huuuuuuuge number of pages and sites that clamor and squeeze and yell to be heard for each search query. Thing is, though, how can you zero in on exactly what you need?

The answer?

Glad you asked! Let's proceed to:

Step 1 - Precision

A good rule of thumb or arm or whole body is:

The more precise, the better.

Common sense, I know. But think about it - let's say that you want to find sites about used volvos, perhaps, from 1970 or so. Certainly, you could search for

old volvos

The results aren't specific enough.

Okay then, how about

1970 volvos

Ah hah! We're getting somewhere! You might uncover:

New 1970 volvo
New 1970 volvo reviews, discussions, specs and more.
www.volvocomments.com/id11680528.html

which at the time of this writing was #3 in the search results and provides a far more targeted resource than simply old volvos.

Remember - "more" is better when it comes to zeroing in on your search results. Thinking about finding a hotel near Disneyland? Searching for "Disneyland hotels" will return far better results than simply "florida hotels." Looking for realtors in Springfield, MA? Searching for "springfield MA realtors" will probably get you much better results than just "MA realtors".

Again - clarity, with a healthy dose of common sense.

Here are some more helpful tips for effective online searching.

• Use quotes (as in "") to group words together - quotes tell a search engine the words must appear as a phrase instead of anywhere on the page.

• Use a minus sign (-) to remove words - let's say that you want to find bathroom remodeling tips but want to remove any contractors from them. Try:

  bathroom remodeling -contractors

• Use the site: tag to search only within a site - you can limit your searches to within specific domains! Let's say that you want to find Microsoft help regarding viruses. Tack on a "site:microsoft.com" to your search to restrict your results only to that area.

  site:microsoft.com virus help

There are many more ways to power up your searching abilites so you become a master sleuth - sometime soon I'll be providing a free emailed class about it! But for the moment, check out the rather useful help resources the big dogs provide:

• Google Search Tips and Features

• Yahoo Search Basics

• Getting Started with MSN Web Search Help

Sounds great, huh? But what if you come across a wonderful result, visit the page, and discover.... the page no longer exists? It's time to:

Step 2 - Take A Trip In the Wayback Machine!

It's the most awesomely cool site on the Internet (barring this one, of course. :-) )!

The Wayback Machine lets you view earlier editions of websites, some of them until back until 1996! And it's most useful in your searches, as well.

Consider the following quest. Imagine you're a fancier of model horses and need to uncover some resin molding resources. Diligent searching led you to

http://www.mindspring.com/~dedeale/molding.html

But when you click on that link, you find the page no longer exists!

Not to fear! First, highlight the address above and press CONTROL c (ie, the control key and the c key together). This will copy the address to your computer's memory.

Next, visit The Wayback Machine, click on the text box next to the Take Me Back button, and press CONTROL v (that should paste the url into the field).

Select the page from 1999, and voila, you can learn all about how to cast your own Resin Models.

Neat, huh?

Step 3 - For More Information

As always, an educated Internet user is the safest online! Check out:

• Finding Information on the Internet - excellent tutorial on all aspects of online searching.

• Librarian's Internet Index - think about it - who needs to know more "how to find" resources than librarians?

• Kid Friendly Search Engines - nice collection of kid-related search engines.

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