Oddly enough, with all of the variance we've seen from search engine to search engine, how they collect their data, how the pages are submitted and how the results are selected, there are some hard and fast rules on how search engines work. From specific keyword combinations to Boolean expressions, when I am researching a particular project online, there are five rules that always garner me the most reliable results:

1. Know what you are looking for before you enter a search term:

Find a "few good search engines" (thanks US Marines) that you're comfortable working with. Not just meta search engines, or indexing services as we've discussed in other projects, but search engines that are specifically tailored to what you're looking for, e.g. if you're searching for cancer cures don't try Google, try the Combined Health Information Database. In other words, the more specific the search engine you use, the more specific the results.

2. Understand what the rules of your particular search engine before you put in a search term:

Some search engines will work better based on Boolean expressions (rather than explain it I thought I'd just link to a short article) and some are plain text search engines like Jeeves at ask.com.

3. Think like a marketer.

On the Internet, free information is just about everywhere. But face it, if there were no money to be made on the Internet, not many companies would be willing to put the information out there. When selecting a search term, a web designer will pick a keyword that describes the business in general terms and then build a more specific group of search terms around that keyword. Some search engines, like Google, give results based upon how many times a word or group of words appears on a given page. Most others are based on "meta keywords" that are placed invisibly on a page. How well a marketer picks their keywords is responsible for about 40% of the hits on their website. In a nutshell, the closer your search query to the keywords the marketer has selected, the more accurate your results will be.

4. Search engines are not magic, and do not read minds.

Sounds simple, but most people simply think that by typing a word into their search box, they will be transported to the exact site they're looking for; this is evidenced by the two most popular search engine queries: www.hotmail.com and www.yahoo.com. While this will produce the desired results on those two occasions, it's certainly frustrating when you're looking for something else only to find that www.cureforcancer.com comes up to a dead end. Yes, it may take a few tries, but again, the more specific your query, the better the results are going to be.

5. Less is more and sometimes more is less, and less can be better than more if you wanted less....

Remember to play a bit with your search term. cancer cure is different than curing cancer when it comes to search terms. If what you're looking for doesn't seem to be working with your selected search term, try the simplest expression of what you're looking for and do a little digging. As in our prior example "cures for cancer", if you're not getting what you want with a group of search terms, give it a hail mary and type in "cancer". I seem to remember my Dad saying something about "sometimes you have to dig through a pile of horse manure to get the the pony" Internet searches can be very much like that. I wonder if that's why they decided to call one of the most popular meta search engines DogPile.