Rather than expecting a site to guess the information that you want, give it a few clues. For instance, if you wanted to learn about flying, typing flying into the search engine would produce hundreds of results.

The search could be narrowed down by using multiple words, however if you simply put, for instance, light aircraft flying but this would return all document with any one of the search terms in on its own. However, if you enter +light+aircraft+flying the results returned should be more relevant. You can also omit particular words from a search. For instance you could enter +light+aircraft-flying and this should return results about light aircraft, but not about flying them.

If you need to find out, for instance, about brain surgeons, if you enter +brain+surgeon it will find all instances of either word anywhere in the page. If you wish to have those words together, in that order, you can search for "brain surgeon". You can combine this with the + and - signs as before.

Make sure that you are as specific as possible, as it will reduce the number, and increase the relevancy of the answers returned. For instance, in Google, brain surgeon returned 151,000 results, whilst "brain surgeon" +UK returned only 2,000 results.

CAPITALISATION: If you're searching for something that normally uses a capital letter, use that capital letter. Some search engines ignore capitalisation, but others take it into account as part of the search process. If you search without capitalisation, many search engines will search every entry, whereas they may only search capitalised entries if used.

SPELLING: If you spell things incorrectly, the chances are you won't get any matches. So if you don't get a sensible response to your search string, check your spelling. Some search engines give you a hint for mis-spellings, and will help you produce a question that both you and the engine understands.

PLAY A WILDCARD: If you are unsure of the exact spelling, or want to include both singular and plural results, try using a wildcard, represented by the asterisk (*) symbol, using it to represent missing or variable letters. For instance if you were searching for 'theatre', but wished to include results from both the UK and the USA, type in theat* and the results will include both theatre and theater.

REPHRASE: If your search doesn't produce many results, try rephrasing the question, thinking of other words you could use. For instance, instead of "light aeroplanes" try "light aircraft".

All search engines list results in order of relevance, with the closest matches listed first. If what you want isn't in the first 2-3 pages, you're unlikely to find it on the 40th page! Don't waste your time wading through the results, try a more specific search.

SEARCH WITHIN: If you have presented what you feel is a sensible question, but are still faced with thousands of responses, try entering more search terms and then click 'Search within these results', and the search engine should narrow down the number of returned entries.

Search engines are non-deterministic, which means that if you search for the same thing in a month's time as you did today, there's no guarantee you'll get the same answer. So it is important that when you do find a useful site, you add it to your Netscape Bookmark list or your Internet Explorer Favorites there and then. You can't rely on doing the same search later and getting the same results.
If you want to do this in Internet Explorer, simply click on Favorites and then select the Add to Favorites option. Netscape users should add Current Page from the Bookmarks menu.

If you click on a link , you will be taken to the new page, and the current page will be closed. However, you can use the 'back' button to return to the page.
If you know that you will definitely wish to return to the page you are on, be aware that some web sites can 'kill' the back button. Therefore right-click on the link and select 'Open in New Window', and the original page will remain open.