Understanding how to perform sophisticated searches of online information will greatly increase your chances of finding what you want. While most popular search engines let you define your search criteria in very specific ways, not all function identically.

Capital Sensitivity

If a search keyword is capitalized, the search engine will return only documents containing the capitalized word. For example, if you were interested in documents relating to the country of China , capitalizing the word and using an engine that supports capital sensitivity narrows down the number of results returned, eliminating documents that relate to china dishes or cookery. Note however, that in many instances it is better to leave keywords uncapitalized to allow the engine to return results that contain keywords in either form.

Phrase Searching

When using search terms containing more than one word in a specific order, by enclosing the words in quotation marks, the engine returns only documents containing the exact phrase. Here's an example: When searching for information on gun control legislation, using "gun control" will eliminate those documents that contain the words gun and control, but not in that order; possibly in entirely different paragraphs and maybe not even relating to the topic of gun control.