Search Engine Training ~Yahoo Search~

Search Engine Training
~Yahoo Search~

One more ‘Search Engine’ and please let me know if you came this far, so I can plan my time accordingly.

 If one of you were helped, it has been worth my while. We will start this one by going to: http://www.yahoo.com/. This bring us to Yahoo’s default page with all of Yahoo’s other products and links, e.g. Yahoo Mail if you have an account &/or E-Dress there. The typical search box is at the top of the page.

There is no simple link to get to Yahoo’s Search Engine page though Yahoo will probably tell us, that the ‘Search Box’ is the link. It is more noticeable when you do type something into the ‘Search Box’, as then you become aware of the ‘Toggle Switch’ below The SB that will drop down suggestions for you to click on, as soon as you have typed enough to allow it to guess. I typed in “Yahoo Search” and when the ‘Result Page’ open up it made more sense.

“Yahoo! Search” is at the top of the ‘Result Page’ and it takes you to: http://search.yahoo.com/ which looks more like a ‘SE’. Clicking on the ‘Options’ links allows a drop down menu to reveal the links to ‘Advanced Search’ and ‘Preferences’. Go ahead and click on ‘Preferences’ and get that part taken care of. You will notice that like Google, you can set your ‘Results Page’ to 100.

To go any further would be a waste of your, as well, as my time, as most everything on any other SE will be along the lines of these last three ‘Lesson Posts.

Any Questions, be sure to let me know, as it would be my pleasure to be of assistance!

Until Next Time, Be Blessed, DP

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Search Engine Training
~MSN/Live Search~

Search Engine Training
~MSN/Live Search~

Now that you have Google Search under your belt, you may not want to go much further, as all the Search Engines (SE) have their sites laid out very well. To the degree, that should you barely have the expertise to reach their Search page you will not have any problems to use what is before you.

MicroSoft Network (http://www.msn.com/) has a full page with a search box at the top, to type in your search parameters. This will suffice for your ‘Ordinary Garden Variety’ searches. Now to set up your ‘General Settings’ or go to an “Avalanched’ search, to the right of the ‘search box’ you will see a ‘Live Search’ link to their stand-alone SE. (http://www.live.com/)

Now that you are there, the options are laid out for you. We will take you thru a couple to ‘Get Your Feet Wet’.
The ‘Cowboy’ background has camouflaged links in it, should you have time to play with them. Above the search box, there are options to be more selective in your search and ‘Web’ is the default search.

Top Left of the page you can click back to MSN’s other sites and on the Top Right, ‘LogIn’, ’Advance search’ (here you can change the ‘General Settings’, for a single search.) ‘CashBack’, (Should you be an ‘On Line Shopper’, check this out.) ‘Options’, (We will look at this below.) and ‘Locality’ for lack of a better word, where The United States’ is the default, with other places to choose to search should you have the need to be more specific.

Now under ‘Options’, you may change your ‘General Settings’, (Called ‘Preferences’ in Google.) and the basic choices, except in ‘Live Search’ you are limited to displaying only 50 pages.

Every Page has the ‘Help’ link at the bottom and we will look at one of the FAQs for this lesson. We Clicked on ‘How can I customize my search?’ and as you can see these directions, will meet your needs. i.e.
1. Go to http://search.live.com.
2. On the right side of the search box, click Options, and then click Advanced Search.
3. In the Advanced search box, under Find search results that include the following, type the keywords for what you want to find, and then select one of the following options:
Continue to choose your options and then
4. Click Add to search.
5. When you’ve finished adding options, click the search button.
WALLA! You are in Business and now you are ready for the Next Lesson
Let me know if this lesson has been a help and
Be Blessed, DP

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Search Engine Training ~Google~

Needing to have a link on another one of my Blogs, it is now apropos to do a little look at ‘Search Engines’. Before Google there were many SEs and when Google appeared, I did not know how I did with out it. In fact even though we will start with it, I have to admit that this will give me a chance to go back and see how some of the others are working, they still vying for a piece of the action.

This training will not only give you a way to find things on the Internet, it will also allow you to have some understanding on SEO i.e. “Search Engine Optimization’ works.

(Remember To Read All The Way Through Before Starting This Project!)

OK Go to http://www.google.com/  and lets take a look! Pretty Simple ‘out the gate’, just type in a on or more word item you are looking for, e.g. Energy and then hit ‘enter’ or click on the ‘Google Search’ Button and at the top we are informed that there are about ‘499 million’ pages to choose from. Should this be your first time to Google or you have never fined-tuned it, you only have the first ten (10) on this view.

Now add another word so we now have, ‘Energy Medicine’ and it narrows it down to ‘25,400,000’ different pages. The more words you add the narrower it gets. Keep in mind that out of that 25+ mill, there will also be pages with only one word or the other. To get a better feel for what I just said, put those two words in Parenthesis so it looks like this: “Energy Medicine” and again hit enter. Now we are down to 346 K (345,000) pages, every page will have both words in it.

Before we continue with the search mode, lets dial in our GSE. (Google Search Engine) Before you do your first search, to the right of the ‘Search Box’ you will see ‘Advanced Search’, ‘Preferences’ and ‘Language Tools’. Now after the first search you will only see ‘Advanced Search’ and ‘Preferences’ to the right of the ‘Search’ Button. You can customize your search by clicking on Advanced Search, tho we are going to fine tune the default Preferences by clinking on … Yes … the word “preferences”. These settings will affect all uses of Google Programs, so keep this in mind as you experiment. And I do want you to experiment.

Leave all the defaults in place, except scroll down to ‘Number Of Results’ click on the display box, (10 is the Default.) and click on 100 (Results per Page.) and to the top or bottom to click on ‘Save Preferences’, which will bring you back to your search page. Now you will see the first 100 (In lieu of the default 10.) with out having to click on the next page at the bottom.

For you ‘Sharpies’ out there, wanting to know why I am being so explicit, read a prior post that explains why! i.e. CLICK HERE

Now that we have our two word ‘Search String’ in place within Parenthesis, we will fine tune it some more. Place a space after the last Parenthesis, then a + and with out any space we add a new search word to tighten it uo some more. Using ‘autism’ after the plus (+) we get it down to ’17,500’ meaning that many with the word ‘autism’ in them somewhere.

By removing the word yoga using a Minus Sign (-) e.g. –yoga after autism space we have eliminated over 10K pages. (7,2600) eliminating the word Reiki we have ‘”Energy Medicine” +autism -yoga -reiki’ now leaving ‘6,060’ thus cutting another 1K+ pages.
Next time we will look at some of the other SEs and see what they have to offer. Until then … Be Blessed, DP

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