How to refine your internet search results

1. Find exact matches
Enclose words or phrases that you want to find exact matches for in double quotation marks. Typing “emperor penguin” longevity will find only pages that have the two words ‘emperor’ and ‘penguin’ in that order, plus the word ‘longevity’ anywhere on the page. Note that web searches are usually not case-sensitive.

2. Wanted and unwanted words
Use a minus (-) sign for unwanted words or phrases, and a plus (+) sign for important words that must appear. For example, penguin -“penguin books”+longevity will remove most Penguin Books results and any sites that don’t include the word ‘longevity’.

Search engines will ignore common words such as ‘the’ ‘a’ and ‘and’ unless you use a plus sign in front of them, but don’t do this unnecessarily as it will increase the number of less relevant results.

3. Group words together
Use single brackets to enclose groups of words you want to find in any order. The search term (longevity penguin emperor) would find only sites that have all three of the words in brackets, but they don’t have to be in any particular order. This is great for phrases that might be arranged differently ­ by other people.

4. Use advanced search options
Use ‘advanced search’ options if they are available. ­ These save you having to remember complicated formats. Typically, they let you search by website, language, country, date and more. Both Google and Ask Jeeves have an advanced search section. A link to Bing’s advanced options appears just above the list of results after you’ve performed a search.