Senior Search Engine Tips - How to Google or Alta Vista or Yahoo

From Alta Vista to Yahoo, this blog entry teaches seniors tips and tricks for searching without wasting time. Grandparents and over 50s learn how to search.

Seniors are a rapidly growing user segment on the Internet, and we've become a major target for information and marketing. If you don't know your way around the 'Net, you can wade through dross for half a day to find topics that interest you. Let's look at a few right-on tips to streamline surfing for the over-50 set.

If you go to Google, Alta Vista, Yahoo or Dogpile for example, can you cut through the doo-doo? First, know what the particular engine is and how it operates. Some, like Google, or Dogpile are engines. Others, like Yahoo are directories. Engines use programs called crawlers or spiders to find the pages that contain information about a given topic. Directories use human editors to group pages into categories. (Yahoo was once totally a directory - but it now uses crawlers as well). To find out more about which is which and how they work, read the articles at Search Engine Watch.

You can sometimes find different responses or hits when you enter a given key word or words into various search engines, but by and large, you'll do better to sample a number of them, find one you really like, and stick with it. That's the first time-saver I'll offer. Don't spend a lot of time hopping from engine to engine.

Once you've selected your favorite engine, get used to brainstorming for key words that make sense. Keep in mind, specific is way better than generic. If you're searching for a used VW bug for sale in your area, you don't want to key in VW and slap enter. You'll get 29 million responses and odds are none will help you. So type in "Volkswagen Beetle Anytown Your State."

Ok, that narrows it a bit. Now - increase your odds of finding the right stuff by knowing two little tricks. Use the "+" sign to include key words and the "-" to exclude them. Like this: Volkswagen +Beetle +Anytown +Your State. That's called a "string". If you enter that string, you'll get back a list of pages that include all of those terms. Pretty specific.

Type this string: Volkswagen -Beetle +Anytown +Your State. The responses include all the pages that have Volkswagen, and Anytown, and Your State. But the search engine will exclude pages that contain the word Beetle. Tailor your search with these two little signs. You'll save tons of time.

Now that you've mastered that, make a firm rule not to divert off subject for any reason, no matter how interesting the off-topic might be. Looking for that VW, you may come across a page that contains a link to famous people who have owned VWs. If you really want to pursue that, do it at another time - follow your original quest to its conclusion. . Some Web browsers offer tabs for you to mark a page and come back to it. Or you can make a note or book-mark the off-topic page. That's good time management.

Here's a place to see a fairly comprehensive list of search engines. Try a few.

To find an in-depth article about finding resources for grandparents parenting grandchildren, read my article Benefits for Grandfamilies at Suite101.

Web Directory Edited by Human's hands.

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