Stop Searching, Start Finding

What is a 'discovery' keyword? It's nothing more than a special keyword that, when used in conjunction with most general keywords, can help you quickly find extremely useful search results related to your topic.

Here are some 'discovery' keyword examples:

tips
articles
guide
checklist
FAQs
resources

So, instead of searching for 'paris travel', search for 'paris travel tips', 'paris travel articles', 'paris travel guide', and so on. Instead of searching for 'buying a home', search for 'buying a home tips', or 'buying a home guide'.

You'll be amazed at the jump in quality search results you'll get.

Try it right now:

http://www.google.com

This tip goes hand-in-hand with what we discussed
in Search Tip #1 about using 'discovery' keywords.

This technique will also help you dramatically narrow the search results you get when looking for the information you want.

It's no secret that the more keywords you add to a search, the fewer, yet more-targeted results you get. The trick is discovering relevant keywords that can help.

For example, let's say you're looking for information related to 'gardening'. If you go to your favorite search engine and simply enter 'gardening' as your query, you'll get a ton of general, mostly useless, results.

But if you add relevant keywords to your search, you can easily narrow your results, depending on the type of gardening information you're looking for:

organic gardening
indoor gardening
rose gardening
vegetable gardening

You can narrow your results even further by adding more relevant keywords to your search:

organic herb gardening
indoor organic gardening
organic vegetable gardening

So, how do you easily come up with more specific, relevant keywords that can help you narrow your search?

One of the best ways is to send your keyword through
Overture.com's keyword suggestion tool, which will display a list of related searches that others have recently performed in relation to your keyword. Check out these results for the term, 'wedding':

Overture Search Suggestion Tool

Any of these related searches can be copied and pasted into your favorite search engine, allowing you to find useful, targeted results.

This is a web search technique that very few people even think about using, but one that can reap some great results.

Nearly every person, place, or thing you'll search for information on has a series of terms related to it, which if you can discover, will allow you to tap into a goldmine of relevant, related information that may be more helpful in your search for content than you can imagine.

For example, if you're looking for information about Germany travel, can you think of any keywords that might help you find information related to Germany travel?

How about:

Oktoberfest
Berlin
Rhine River
Black Forest
Castles

Would knowing these keywords and searching for information about them help in your overall quest for information about Germany travel?

More than likely, yes!

Or how about another example - would searching for any of these related keywords help in your search for information related to sleeplessness:

Insomnia
Snoring
Fatigue
Drowsiness
Nap

They probably would.

Related keywords can help you expand the scope of your web search into many useful areas that in themselves often lead to great content.

So, how do you come up with keywords that are related to your main search?

An easy way is to head over to a search engine at Gigablast, and search for your original keyword there.

When you do this, at the top of the results page, Gigablast displays a series of terms it calls Giga Bits, which are terms related to the keyword you're searching for.

Any of these terms can be clicked on as a basis for a new, but related search. This is a very unique and powerful feature of Gigablast.

If you rely solely on Google for all your search needs, you're missing out on a lot of great content.

Don't get me wrong, Google is a great resource, but it's far from a perfect resource. Try to find audio with it and you'll see what I mean.

So this search tip boils down to the concept of expanding your horizons when it comes the tools you use to find content online.

When doing a web search, if you're not finding what you're looking for using Google, simply run your search through a different search engine. Each search engine has its own personality which is reflected in the results it returns.

What I mean by this is that if you search for 'dog' on Google, in addition to the regular search results, you might also see book experts with the term 'dog' in them, as a bonus from Google. Whereas the same search on Yahoo might turn up regular search results, in addition to links to Yahoo's extensive pet portal.

You get the idea.

Here are just a few of the various web search tools to try when you go looking for general web content:

http://www.yahoo.com

http://www.ask.com

http://www.clusty.com

http://www.alexa.com

http://www.gigablast.com

Another thing to keep in mind when looking for content online is that 'general' search engines (such as Google and Yahoo) are great when looking for general content, but when you go looking for specialized content, such as audio, video, news, etc, you need to use specialized search engines.

Yes, there are very powerful search engines designed specifically for finding various kinds of content.

If you're looking for high quality results, you need to move beyond Google!

When looking for audio, try:

http://www.altavista.com

When looking for video, try:

http://www.youtube.com

http://video.google.com

http://video.yahoo.com

When looking for reference material, try:

http://www.answers.com

http://www.wikipedia.org

When looking for news, try:

http://news.google.com

http://news.yahoo.com

http://www.topix.net

There are specialty search engines for practically any kind of content you can imagine:

Articles
Quotes
Song lyrics
Blogs
RSS feeds
News pictures
Online multimedia
Webcams
and more!

Using these various search engine tools for the task at hand will dramatically increase the quality of results you get, but there's no denying that sending your search to these various search engines will require a little sweat.

When searching for information about a specific topic, first stop and think if there are any domains/sites you're familiar with that would have information related to what you're interested in, and search that domain-only.

For example, if I'm looking for information related to Tiger Woods, why search the entire Web when www.golf.com probably has all the information you need?

By narrowing your search to a specific site, related to your keyword(s), you can quickly eliminate the millions of pages of clutter that a general web search inherently brings with it.

You can still use Google to do your search (you can search for "Tiger Woods" on www.golf.com), you just need to enter your search in the following way:

"tiger woods" site:golf.com

Notice the addition of: site:golf.com

This tells Google to confine your search to only pages on www.golf.com.

Here's a few more examples of searching for "Tiger Woods" on specific domains:

"tiger woods" site:cnn.com
"tiger woods" site:golfchannel.com
"tiger woods" site:foxsports.com

Try these queries yourself to get a feel for how it works.

So what do you do when you're searching for information about a topic (such as 'cat allergies') in which you have no clue what specific domains might be related to it?

Here's what you do:

1. Go to Google and do a general search for 'cat allergies'

2. Look at the sites that appear in the top 10, note the domain names (my results turned up a site at catsunited.com).

3. Redo your search for 'cat allergies', limiting your search to one of the top 10 domains listed (such as catsunited.com):

cat allergies site:catsunited.com

For me, this returned 23 pages of highly focused information related to cat allergies, as opposed to the nearly 700,000 pages that resulted from a general web search.

This tip is all about search shortcuts,which are nothing more than simple ways of telling a search engine that your query is related to a specific search task.

They're a great example of just how useful and smart search engines have become.

The Big 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Ask) all offer search shortcuts. They may call them different things, but they essentially all work the same.

Here's how:

If you want the weather for your zip code, head over to Google, and enter the following:

weather 47401

or on Yahoo, do it this way:

weather Berlin

Want a definition for a word? Google, Yahoo, and Ask will all allow you to find it quickly by entering your search the following way:

define slurp

The addition of the term 'define' to your query tells the search engine you're looking for a definition for the word that follows.

These are just a couple of the dozens of search shortcuts the various search engines provide.

With search shortcuts you can quickly find:

Flight information
Weather
Movie showtimes
Gas prices for a zip code
Scores for a particular sports team
Exchange rates
Hotel information for a city or zip code
and much more...

Here are links to the shortcut homepages of the Big 3 search engines. Try these out for yourself. They can be real time-savers.

Google:

http://www.google.com/help/features />.html

Yahoo:

http://tools.search.yahoo.com/shortcuts/

Ask:

http://sp.ask.com/docs/about/site_features.shtml

I'm all for expanding your search horizons beyond
just using Google. That being said, I also believe that Google is probably the most powerful search engine on the planet.

Understanding Google inside and out, how it works, and some of the untold hundreds of ways you can use it, will give you a skill/advantage that puts you well ahead of 95% of the people online today.

Remember, in the information-age, what skill could be more valuable than finding quality information and other forms of content (audio, video, ebooks, and so on)?

All I'd like you to do today is visit the following URL, and soak-in all the search-goodness about using Google you'll discover:

(the page contains a lot of content, so please be patient while it loads)
http://www.googleguide.com/googleguide.html

That's it. It might seem simple, but it should actually keep you busy for a while. :-)

This web search tip is based on the idea that one good thing leads to another - or in the case of searching for information, one great resource leads to another.

Ok, so you've found a great resource online. Something that is exactly what you were looking for.

It has a number of facts, information, and other content that provide answers to your questions. Chances are that it doesn't contain everything you're looking for.

No problem!

Google has a very useful feature that lets you enter the URL of a page, and it will return to you a list of pages with similar/related content.

So where one resource/page might be weak in a particular area of a subject, a related resource/page might be strong.

Several resources together usually provides a very thorough understanding of the subject matter you're searching for.

Using Google's related pages feature is very easy.

When you find a page/resource that you find useful, copy its URL (say, www.golf.com), then head over to Google and enter this into the search box:

related:www.golf.com

After you press enter, Google will return a list of related sites/pages.

This search tip is a simple trick for finding the second most popular file on the Web (besides Webpages themselves).

I'm talking about PDF documents. You might know them also as ebooks. These are multi page documents that people create for all sorts of reasons, including:

Instructional materials
Textbooks
Catalogs
Reports
Brochures
and more...

You can download them to your computer for viewing at any time.

There are tons of them online, for practically any subject, waiting for you!

To find PDF documents with Google, you simply enter something similar to the following into Google's search box:

sailing tips filetype:pdf

The addition of 'filetype:pdf' tells Google to find PDF documents related to sailing tips.

That's all there is to it.

When you combine this ability of finding PDF documents with the concept you learned earlier in Search Tip #1 of using 'discovery' keywords, it's easy to find ebooks containing tips, how-to's, checklists, and more, related to your keyword.

sailing how-to's filetype:pdf
sailing checklist filetype:pdf
sailing guide filetype:pdf

In addition to finding PDF documents this way, Google also has the ability to search for other filetypes, such as Word documents (filetype:doc), Excel spreadsheets (filetype:xls), and Powerpoint presentations (filetype:ppt), among others.

I hope this information has met your expectations so far.

If you've gone through all the web search tips, you've discovered a lot of techniques on how to find the information and/or content you want online.

Believe it or not, we've just scratched the surface of what's possible.

Stay tuned for more powerful web search tips.

One thing that can't be gained by learning all these powerful tips and techniques is how to utilize them all within a reasonable timeframe.

That's why Search Automator 3 was created - to provide instant access to the most powerful search tools on the planet, and to automate the entire search and discovery process.

I purchased Version 1 years ago and loved it from the beginning. Version 3 is even better.

With just a click, Search Automator 3 can expose to you all sorts of content related to your keyword(s), including (but not at all limited to):

Tips
Tutorials
Guides
Resources
Ebooks
Images
Audio clips
Video
Newletters
News articles
Blogs
RSS feeds
How-to's
And so much more...

If you create information products, do market research, help others find information, or are simply an information-junkie, I encourage you to grab a copy of Search Automator 3 today.

The time you'll save, and the quality of content you'll discover will quickly pay for itself.

There's a 90-day, 100% money-back guarantee if you decide it doesn't.

I'm excited about Search Automator 3, and the potential it has to literally transform your online experience.

Visit Search Automator 3 and grab your copy today.