Keywords

Since we know search engines produce matches based on the words you typed, we should spend a moment to appreciate just how your keywords predetermine your search results. Search engines are not intelligent: they can only attempt to produce relevant results.

Spelling a word wrong, using the wrong word or name - these are simple things that will prevent you from finding the information you need. Your chances of locating relevant information are minimal if you do not have some basic understanding of what you want to find. Ask yourself, What am I looking for?

Since the Internet contains trillions of web pages, you can imagine how many times a certain word might be found in all those pages. Using several specific keywords is extremely important. If you're looking for health information, what specifically do you want to find? Information on doctors? Treatments or procedures? Nutrition? Try to express your search as concisely and precisely as possible.

Certain words called stop words are not considered by many search engines. Such words, such as and, of, and the occur too commonly to have any research value. Try to eliminate unnecessary words from your keywords.