How do you search for information?

Originally answered Feb 12, 2018

1. Use sufficient search terms to clearly specify the object of your search, not just one or two words.
2. Use quotation marks and Boolean operators (e.g., +) to refine your search.
3. Scroll through multiple pages of search results, not just the first one.
4. Modify your search terms and continue searching to get variations of the results.
5. Click on the promising search results, take time to read through them, and follow links found within them.
6. On those search results pages that have their own search boxes, try searching within those pages.
7. Try searching in the Internet Archive for pages that are no longer live on the Internet or for earlier versions of pages that have changed.
8. Ask in Quora, or search for communities relevant to the information you are seeking, and post queries in them to get results from actual people.
9. For book content, try searching within Google Books.
10. Search within individual social media tools, e.g., Quora, LinkedIn, and Twitter.