The Art of Googling

"The Internet is a great place to find information. The only problem is we don't know where to look...". We've heard this remark probably a thousand of times. And ignorant as it may sound, it's 100% correct.

Finding information on the web is not an easy task. If you don't know where to look in the first place, the only resort will be an Internet search engine. But the problem with search engines is that they're only good to the extent of the search algorithm they're based upon. That might sound a little gibberish, but all it implies is that search engines are just as flawed as the humans who program it!

So don't expect a search engine to deliver a recipe of "how to create your own universe" when you type in the words how, to, create, your, own, universe. This of course does not imply that there aren't any recipes in the Internet on how you can create a universe. It simply means that the search engine is not highly evolved enough to know that you're looking for a way create a universe.

So what can you do? The first and most familiar way to tackle this kind of situation is be unhappy at yourself, the search engine and everyone else in the universe who think that the Internet is a great place to find information. (Then you can criticize the government, LTTE, United States and afterwards maybe God as well for providing just the right infrastructure to place you in a situation like this)

The second solution is of course the rational one, which most of us dislike putting into action. It goes a little bit like this.

First you can add quotes (" ") to your phrase and let the search engine search for the whole phrase instead of searching for individual words that can come in different parts of the web page. (For example if you search my name on the Internet you may get a bizarre case like an obituary notice where a Ranga De Silva and an Achala Kamaladasa has died due to tragic circumstances...)

Going back to our original search query on "how to create your own universe", you might get results of various kinds of books that might be in stall at amazon.com or maybe even in e-bay. But since you're not crazy enough to buy a book on the matter, you might want to eliminate the search results for books...

So what do you do? Just add in '-book' without the single quotes. This 'subtracts' the search results that include book in the same webpage.

Another neat trick is adding a plus sign. For example there are countless amounts of recipes of "how to create your own" somethings, anythings and everythings on the Internet. So you want to make sure that the word 'universe' is a compulsory search query. For that just add a plus sign in front of the Universe. (+universe)

Then again some people don't like to use the word Universe, simply because it's too clich‚. They use words like cosmos or even the great abyss. For this reason Google has invented the synonyms search. All you have to do is add the sign '~' without the single quotes in front of the desired word. (~Universe)

When all else fails you might go crazy and want to go back to amazon.com and buy the damn book instead. For this Google has also invented a neat trick! You can actually search your query on a specific domain. In our case we want to search the domain amazon.com so all we have to type is "site:www.amazon.com" after our search query.

Now amazon.com might have prices ranging from $50-400 for a book that tells you how to create your own universe. If you're a heart patient and your heart is not in the mood to see a price over the range of $100, don't panic, Google has a solution for that as well. All you need to do is search for a range. To do that just enter limits of price and add two dots between them ($50..$100)

If all these shortcuts seem wayward to remember then go to Google Advanced Search. There you'll find a lot of other options, including date, occurrences, usage rights and a heap of other filters.

If all these fail, then you might as well stop thinking about creating your own universe. But don't loose faith on the Internet, with a little experience (and a little luck sprinkled on top) you might get the search engine to actually behave the way you want to.

With the time constraints you have and the with the infinite array of possibilities that you might indulge yourself rather than sitting front of a computer and typing random queries, it's safe to say that it's highly improbable that you'll succeed.

But it's not impossible.

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