Often, you’re not trying to visit a particular website, but looking for a particular bit of information – the answer to a question, a recipe, a product to buy, etc. In those cases, the most common way to find what you’re looking for is to use a search engine. Search engines use sophisticated techniques to build in index of the entire Web, which allows you to use simple phrases and keywords to find the information you’re looking for.

All search engines share a basic design in common: They start with a search box where you enter your search query. You can execute your search by clicking a button or pressing enter. After that, you’re shown a list of results, each of which is a link to a website that matches your search.

A Google search for 'how to search the internet'

Common search engines include:

Search queries

A search query is the phrase or set of keywords you enter into a search engine to perform your search. There are two common strategies you can use when preparing a search query:

  1. Focusing on the most important keywords you want to find:
    • dog training tips
    • theory special relativity
  2. Writing questions:
    • how do I teach my dog tricks?
    • what is the theory of special relativity?

There are also some advanced search techniques that are worth knowing:

  • Find complete phrases (instead of individual words) by surrounding them in quotes:
    • who said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself”?
  • Limit your search results to a single site to search inside a website:
    • barack obama site:nytimes.com
  • Exclude a word from your search results by using a minus-sign:
    • barack -obama