Enter phrases or questions rather than single words. Entering king arthur holy grail is more effective than simply typing arthur. You can also enter a question such as who found the holy grail?
Avoid using generic search terms. The phrase round table will yield too many results if you're looking for information about King Arthur's famous furniture. Instead try king arthur knights round table.
If you don't get what you want in the first attempt, don't give up. Modify the original query by substituting synonyms or related words. Add descriptive terms (such as adjectives) to make your query more precise.
Put quotation marks around specific verbatim phrases that you want to find exactly as written, such as "to be or not to be".
Use the Boolean operators AND, OR, and NOT, as well as the + and - signs. Nearly every search engine recognizes these terms. AND links words that must be contained in the result: arthur AND merlin. If only one word must be returned, use OR: merlin OR merlyn. Use NOT or the minus sign before a word to exclude it from the results: holy grail -monty -python. The plus sign used before a word indicates that it must appear in the search results: +king +arthur.
Don't create too long a Boolean string to narrow a search. Many search engines won't give results if a string has more than two or three NOT statements.
To search a specific site, type host: domain keyword. For example, to find CNN's coverage of Bosnia, type host: cnn.com bosnia. For information from a specific country, type domain: country keyword. For example, domain: uk football will take you to British sites dedicated to soccer.
Some search engines let you use the pipe character (|) to search within subject categories. For example, type dance|tango to search for the word tango within the category dance.
These tips are condensed from PC World, June, 1999.