Using a Search Engine

Search engines are the standard way of finding information on the internet with Google being the most popular by search volume—74% in the UK, 61.8% in the US and 82% in France (Source: www.comscore.com)

There are also a number of ‘niche’ search engines and directories catering for specialist areas such as science, aviation and medicine. 
    
Getting to the information sometimes involves a bit of ‘trial and error’ but becomes quick and easy with experience.

For example, if I were looking for information on the Composer and Conductor John Williams, I might proceed as follows:

I could start my Google search with the following term in the search box:

John Williams                                                                   Result: 28,100,000 hits

Essentially, the search will match on these two words found anywhere on the web site—both must be present but not necessarily together.

Actually, search engines have become rather more-sophisticated at judging what is required so this search, while producing a large number of results, would probably place those sites containing this exact phrase at the top of the list. 

Using "Quotes", I could refine the search to match the exact phrase rather than the individual words.

“John Williams”                                                               Result: 7,370,000 hits

Because the classical guitarist of the same name is rather better known, I could further refine with a mix of an exact phrase and individual words:

“John Williams” conductor                                               Result: 301,000 hits

To learn about work other than film scores so I could exclude some words with a 'minus' sign:

“John Williams” conductor –film                                      Result: 148,000 hits

This search focuses on Scottish and Welsh performances:

conductor Scotland OR Wales "John Williams" -film        Result: 23,500 hits

Because this person is well known, there are bound to be lots of hits but the point here is to illustrate the basic principles of refining searches.

Rather than messing with punctuation and logical expressions (AND/OR, etc) as I have done in this illustration, it is easier to click on the ‘Advanced Search’ link and generate the search statement by filling in a form which makes it very clear which words and phrases are being included or excluded.

Tips

1. Always think of your search terms as individual words rather than a question and make every word relevant—computers don't (yet) have 'understanding' in the human sense so you won't get very useful results from an expression like: "please tell me about people who breed labrador dogs in the South of France or the Northern part of Spain"
   
   The only relevant words here are breed, labrador, dogs, France, Spain and, possibly, South of France though I suspect that searching on that exact term would exclude a lot of relevant results.
   
   I would be inclined to go with a search on labrador dog breeders France OR Spain in the first instance
    
2. If you actually know the address of the site you are looking for, go to it directly by typing the address into the browser address box rather than firing-up Google, Yahoo or whatever and searching for it, as quite a lot of people seem to do.
   
   While this does actually work in many cases, search engines don't have details of every single web site and, even if a web site is specifically submitted to them, it may take a few weeks to appear in the listings.
   
   A search on the address is sometimes useful to see which other web sites refer to the one that you are interested in. 

www.google.co.uk

www.google.fr

www.google.com (US Site, may redirect to your local site)

www.yahoo.com