Hey I find it really hard to keep up to date with all the technolgy espicially when I no longer have the time to learn as my son keeps me busy, has anyone got any tips on how to use the internet effectively as I seem to spend hours just looking for one thing :S
Google is a fantastic search engine.
Use the + symbol next to words if you want to search for things together (e.g. recipes +chicken +pie).
Use the - symbol next to words if you want to avoid certain results (e.g. to avoid recipes for a chicken pie that includes mushrooms +chicken +pie -mushroom).
If you are looking for something you can search for that exact phrase by using quote marks (e.g. "Chicken and mushroom pie recipes")
I'm hungry now.
Scott Russon
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Member of the Platform team
And also if you want to search for a specific phrase (like fish and chips) then you can put quotes round it "fish and chips". Then it only brings up pages that have the phrase written like that.
Otherwise, you'd get everything with those words in, even if they weren't together.
Many search engines have an advanced search option (Google has it to the right of where you type) where you can limit things such as language (English only), country code (UK only) and less common things such as file type (.pdf) or the date range a page was posted (within the last month).
Sometimes it's hard to be specific, because you don't know exactly what word(s) to use. When you search, keep an eye out for other key words that relate to what you really want then update your search with those.