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Search Smarter
Successful searching is a blend of art and science, of intuition and expertise—something some are born to, and others have to learn. This means that searching is more about behavior than it is about technology. That is, how you search is just as – if not more – important than the actual queries your enter or options you select.
Effective searchers are always looking for that next piece of information. It’s a matter of curiosity; the page you’re looking at may be interesting, but you need to know what’s on the next page. To this way of thinking, you never know what you might find until you look. If you're not curious, you'll never stumble over anything useful – and there's a lot of stuff on the web to stumble over.
This means exploring further on a given website than that first page that Google points you to. Click through a few of the links on that page; quite often, good information leads to more good information on a related site. You should never stop when you find a good site. Instead, use it as a launching pad for further information gathering.
That also means searching those good sites you find. If a site has its own internal search engine, use it. If not, click on the site's navigation tools to check out other sections of the site. You never know what useful information you’ll find.
The point is to not stop with the first search result Google delivers – and never click that one-result I’m Feeling Lucky button. Keep searching, keep clicking, keep digging for more information. Google can find a lot, but it can’t find everything; your curiosity will help you discover more than Google delivers.
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Michael Miller is a prolific and popular writer. He has written more than 100 non-fiction books over the past two decades, along with numerous articles and blog posts for a variety of websites. His best-selling books include Using Google Advanced Search, Googlepedia: The Ultimate Google Resource, Windows 7 Your Way, and Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Computer Basics.