Meeting Logic

So many times you look up a subject as a keyword search and come up with nothing. Other times you’ll find pages of advertisements instead of good information on the subject we’re researching. Why is this and how can you avoid this dilemma?

When someone wants their website to be entered into a search engine, they need to pay a fee for the privilege. The sites that are advertising products for sale will usually have more money and hence will be willing to pay a higher price to be entered into the keyword search engine. The sites paying the most money will be the ones who are first listed in a keyword search. You can’t avoid this problem but there are some ways you can employ a keyword search tool to help you find the information you need.

One such approach is to be as specific as possible about the subject you’re researching. If you are gathering information about Texas Cattle Ranches, the best keyword search tool to use is to type in Texas Cattle Ranches instead of just the word ranches. If you type in the word “ranches” chances are you will get general information about ranches or web advertisements for ranches for sale. This would be helpful if this were what you were looking for, but if you want detailed information on Texas Cattle Ranches you need to specify that in your keyword search. Using this keyword search tool is a great idea.
 
Another idea that is very simple is to type in your search request in quotations like this: ”Texas Cattle Ranches”.  Otherwise the information generated will show up as the separate words bringing up all things having to do with Texas, cattle, and ranches instead of the total phrase Texas Cattle Ranches.

An additional option for finding information with a keyword search tool is to use more than one search engine. Some search engines like Google are handy for a miscellaneous, general search. Other search engines like Dogpile will give you a mixture of findings in some of the most popular search engines like Yahoo, Google, Altavista, and Ask Jeeves. 

If you have a very detailed subject, you may want to find a search engine that is specific to the topic you are researching. One such search engine is Education World. Education World is a keyword search tool created expressly for teachers. So if you are an educator and are looking for information that that is specific to your discipline, this engine could be helpful for you. Another example: if you are female and are looking for information specific to women you could try ivillage as a keyword search tool.

The last and most valuable piece of information is to remember that the information you glean from your computer is only as good as your keyword search tool methods.