searching the web

Please help an idiot.

Is there a way to do a search for a multi-word term (i.e. double jeapordy) and NOT get sites containing only one of the words?

Yes.

Oh, you want to know what it is?

It depends on the search engine. For example, in Alrtavista, to get sites containing double and jeapordy but not requiring the words to be together:

+double +jeapordy

In most if not all search engines, to search for the phrase “double jeapordy”:

“double jeapordy”

That is, enclose the phrase with double quotes.

Many search engines have boolean capabilities (sometimes listed in “advanced search”) where you can do queries like:

“double jeapordy” near (legal or law) not “Trebeck”

You might also try “double jeopardy”.

Thanks JonF.

go to http://www.google.com and simply type in all the trems. It is much better than any onther search engine i have ever used.

I’ll second the recommendation of google, but do watch out for those trems. They can turn vicious when you type them. (I find the yellow-bellied trem is the most common type, myself, but that could just be this area.)
[triple checks for typos in this post…]

I like google too, especially when doing searches that return a large number of hits. It does a good job of guessing which one is the most relevant - one method it uses is to prefer pages where the keywords occur close together in the page.

However, it does not do phrase searches. If you search for “to be or not to be”, google won’t find many Shakespearean sites. I think http://www.altavista.com/ is a better bet if you want to search for a phrase.

AltaVista, and their cut-down version at raging.com, are very good at “advanced” searches like this, and they offer a very thorough tutorial of their services. They also let you use the following commands (from here):

Let me embellish a little bit on what is being suggested here:

If you are looking for an “official” site, e.g.

  • USA Treasury Department
  • Swiss Federal Government
  • Encyclopaedia Britannica
  • Britney Spears Fan Club
    etc…

Your best bet is a site that groups websites in categories, such as Yahoo! or Excite.

If on the other hand you are looking for a website on an obscure subject or to answer a question, e.g.
“What colour triangle did the gypsies wear in Concentration Camps in WWII?”
There are several ways you can approach the search:

a) Go to a “categorized” web site like Yahoo! or Excite, look for the WWII Concentration Camp category, and then go read those sites that may contain your answer.
b) go to a site like Google or AlltheWeb that searches for text in web pages, and type in as many keywords as you think would probably be on the page, e.g. “gypsy patch concentration camp” with the hope that you will find your page.

Also realize that any web page you find does not necessarily contain reliable information. I could write a 20-page thesis on Mongolian history, but if I have no expertise on the subject, all the information contained therein could be unmitigated crap. Caveat lector!

Which can be used in non-obvious ways. There’s a short article in the print version of Fast Company this month, claiming that you can find all sorts of interesting and sometimes hidden things on a company’s web site using the “host:” keyword and key words and phrases like “business plan”.