How to Search the Internet Effectively?

Madhav Malhotra and Avneet Kaur

In this blog post, we are going to break down the skill of doing online search effectively.

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What is Online Search?

Let us try and understand this from first principles.

Being online essentially means navigating the internet. The internet is a network of interconnected computing devices that can share information and talk to each other. Each of these computers (or servers) has an address, which we usually access through links (URLs) that we type into a browser.

Online search, then, is the act of finding relevant information within this massive network, using tools designed to help us locate content without knowing exact addresses in advance.

At its core, online search answers the question:

“Given what I’m looking for, where on the internet is the most useful and trustworthy information likely to be?”

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How Do Online Search Engines Such as Google, Bing, etc. Work?

At a high level, search engines work in three main stages:

Crawling

Search engines use automated programs called crawlers (or bots) to scan the internet. These crawlers follow links from one website to another, discovering new pages and updated content.

Indexing

Once a page is discovered, the search engine tries to understand it. It analyzes:

• The text on the page
• Headings and structure
• Images and metadata
• Links to and from other pages

This information is stored in a massive index, like a highly organized digital library.

Ranking

When you type a query, the search engine:

• Interprets what you are asking
• Searches its index for relevant pages
• Ranks results based on hundreds of signals

These signals include relevance, clarity, freshness, usability, and perceived trustworthiness. Because of these complexities, how you search affects what the engine can reasonably return.

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What Techniques Should You Use When Doing Online Search?

1. Be Precise With Your Query

Vague searches lead to vague results.

• Instead of: learning skills
• Try: online workshops for adult learners digital skills Canada

Specificity helps the search engine narrow the problem space.

2. Use Quotation Marks for Exact Phrases

Quotation marks force the engine to look for an exact phrase.

Example: "critical thinking in the workplace"

This is especially useful when searching for definitions, quotes, or specific concepts.

3. Exclude Unwanted Results

Use the minus sign (-) to remove noise.

Example: python data analysis -snake

This is useful when a word has multiple meanings.

4. Use Site and Domain Filters

You can limit results to specific websites or domains.

Examples:

• site:gov.ca digital skills training
• site:edu critical thinking definition

5. Use filetype to Find Specific Kinds of Documents

A lot of high-quality content on the internet exists as documents that can be accessed. Search engines allow you to target these using the filetype: operator.

Common and Useful File Types:

• filetype:pdf – reports, whitepapers, policies, manuals
• filetype:ppt or filetype:pptx – presentations and lecture slides
• filetype:doc or filetype:docx – written briefs and papers
• filetype:xls or filetype:xlsx – datasets and spreadsheets

Examples:

• digital skills training filetype:pdf
• critical thinking workplace filetype:ppt
• online learning research filetype:docx

6. Use AND and OR to Control the Scope of Your Search

When we search, we often want to either narrow results or expand them intentionally. Search engines allow us to do this using logical operators such as AND and OR.

Using AND (Narrowing Your Search)

AND tells the search engine to only show results that contain all of these terms. This is useful when you want results that sit at the intersection of multiple ideas.

Examples:

• online learning AND adult learners
• digital skills AND Canada
• critical thinking AND workplace

Using OR (Expanding Your Search)

OR tells the search engine to show results that contain either of these terms. This is especially useful when a concept has multiple names, has region specific terminology or one wants to explore a topic broadly.

Examples:

• online learning OR e-learning
• job skills OR workforce skills
• college OR university

Combining AND and OR

You can combine these operators to build more precise searches:

• (online learning OR e-learning) AND adult learners
• (AI OR artificial intelligence) AND workplace skills
• (training OR upskilling) AND Canada

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How to Evaluate What You Find?

Since internet has a lot of computers sharing information and not all of them are trustworthy, it is important to have a process to decide whether the information is worth trusting. Let us take a look at a mechanism that one can apply.

The CRAAP Test

CRAAP Test asks one to evaluate sources across five dimensions:

• Currency: Is the information recent enough for your purpose?
• Relevance: Does it directly answer your question, or is it loosely related?
• Authority: Who wrote it? What are their credentials or affiliations?
• Accuracy: Is the information supported by evidence and references?
• Purpose: Is the content meant to inform, persuade, sell, or provoke?

Applying even a light version of this test immediately improves the quality of your research.

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Closing Thought

The internet gives us access to more information than any generation before us. It is important to be able to navigate it to find the information you are looking for and from trustworthy sources.

It is also important to think in iterations and to combine the different search techniques to see which suits your needs and provides the best value in trustworthy high quality sources of information.