Let's say I want to get more information on a vacation where I can go scuba diving. If I type in 'scuba,' there are too many results to weed through.
The first step to effectively searching is narrow your search by typing in 'scuba diving.' Google automatically searches for variations on words, so it will include 'dive' and 'diving.' Add Quotes Around the Phrase To narrow the search more, we can search for just pages with the exact phrase 'scuba diving.' Just put quotes around the phrase.
And to narrow it further, I'll type the word 'vacation.' It doesn't need to be a 'scuba diving vacation,' so the word 'vacation' is not in quotes.
Use a Minus or Plus Sign
Also, if you had results you want to exclude, like 'scuba certification,' just type 'scuba' then a space and a minus sign, followed by the word 'certification' with no space in front of it, like this: "scuba diving" vacation –certification. This tells the search engine that you want to search for 'scuba' without the word 'certification' on the page.
Google does not include common words in searches, such as 'the,' 'and,' or 'a'. If a common word or digit is essential to your search, simply type a space, a plus sign, and then the word or digit. I do not need this feature for my scuba dive search.
Try a Similar Phrase
You can also try to think of other ways to say it, like another word for a place that has what you're looking for. I will try 'beach resort.' Use the uppercase 'OR' between words or phrases to search either one term or another. I will search for 'scuba diving vacation' OR 'beach resort.'
Check Your Results
Another quick tip you can do to search effectively is look at your results. If one Web page is indented, it means that it is located on the same Web site as the page listed above it.
Also notice the cache link. If you click on that, it will show you exactly what page it found the words you searched for, with your keywords highlighted.
Business software units of Yahoo Inc and Google Inc are introducing beefed-up versions of their Web-based software that compete with Microsoft Outlook, offering yet another clue why Microsoft Corp made a $45 billion unsolicited bid for Yahoo.
While Microsoft views Yahoo as its path into the lucrative Web advertising market dominated by Google, Tuesday's software announcements by Yahoo and Google demonstrate that Microsoft also needs to fend off potential challenges to its business software franchises.
Yahoo's new Zimbra Collaboration Suite (ZCS) 5.0 allows users to read Microsoft Outlook e-mail alongside Yahoo Mail or Google's Gmail or Zimbra's own branded e-mail.
In effect, Zimbra's upgrade lets users read work and personal e-mail side by side.
"We really think this is the next generation of Outlook that we are announcing," said Satish Dharmaraj, co-founder and chief executive of Zimbra.
Yahoo paid $350 million in September to buy Zimbra, a provider of e-mail, calendar and contacts software that competes with Microsoft and Google.
Around the same time, Google paid $625 million to acquire e-mail security firm Postini to beef up Google Apps to make it more useful inside businesses. Google Apps, a suite of software that competes with Microsoft Office. counts 500,000 organizational customers and adds 2,000 customers a day.
"We replace the old world of installing software and dealing with security patches and coming in late at night to restart computers," Scott Petry, founder of Postini in 1999 and now a Google product manager, said of his company's impact.
Postini is releasing new business security software that allows organizations to block spam, archive and encrypt e-mail and uphold corporate e-mail policies.
One Postini service for e-mail search and discovery overturns the need for network administrators to limit e-mail storage -- a source of frustration for many employees.
WEB-BASED CHALLENGERS
ZCS 5.0 can work offline and also allows users to use Zimbra on Apple Inc's iPhone. It also now works with Research in Motion Ltd's BlackBerry e-mail devices and Java-based phones, the company said.
Yahoo is using Zimbra to embed popular Web-programs -- such as Flickr photo-sharing, Web news feeds and Yahoo Finance or Yahoo search -- inside Yahoo Mail, the world's most popular consumer e-mail service.
Zimbra software is targeted at universities and small businesses and Internet service providers such as Comcast Corp and Indiatimes, which in turn can offer such e-mail services to millions of consumers.
Postini's services are hosted in Google's data centers, allowing Postini to offer its security services at dramatically lower cost than many existing e-mail security products.
Annually, Postini spam protection starts at 25 cents a month per user while message filtering costs $1 a month. The software can work with e-mail systems such as Microsoft Outlook, International Business Machines Corp's Lotus Notes or Novell Inc's Groupwise.
Office workers can search back through years of e-mail as a free side benefit when their companies buy Postini's legal discovery feature to meet compliance requirements of laws aimed at preventing white-collar crime. This feature costs $25 per user per year and $10 for each additional year of archiving.
The House Energy and Commerce subcommittee said it plans to hold a hearing later this year on the online advertising market and other issues related to Microsoft's bid to buy Yahoo. That makes three congressional panels planning hearings on Microsoft Corp.'s $41 billion unsolicited offer, which Yahoo Inc. hasn't yet accepted.
The House Judiciary Committee said last week it would hold a hearing on the deal, while the Senate Judiciary Committee's antitrust panel also said it would examine the transaction if it proceeds.
Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., chairman of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, said in a statement the "recent announcement by Microsoft demonstrates that consolidation of companies in the Internet advertising world will continue," whether Yahoo accepts the software giant's offer or not.
The hearing will be scheduled this spring, Rush said in a statement, and will focus on privacy issues raised by the consolidation of online search and advertising companies. The subcommittee will also request a "confidential briefing" from regulators before it reviews the deal, Rush said.
The privacy concerns surrounding the Microsoft-Yahoo deal center on the amount of consumer data collected by the two companies, consumer advocates said.
"There's no question that the merging of the data collection and (advertising) targeting platforms would raise serious privacy concerns," said Jeffrey Chester, president of the Center for Digital Democracy.
The CDD and other groups raised similar objections last year when Google Inc. purchased online ad services provider DoubleClick Inc. That deal was approved in December by the Federal Trade Commission.
Microsoft's shares dropped $1.12, or 3.7 percent, to close at $29.07. Yahoo shares fell 35 cents to finish at $28.98.
Meta data is information used to describe the document but it is not displayed. Two common types of meta tags are keywords and description.
Keywords and Meta Data
Keywords make it easier for search engines to find your page. You can put words that describe your page within a meta tag. Open a bracket, type meta then a space. Type name= keywords in quotes. Then type content= quote, and now type some keywords that describe your site. Separate them by commas. Don't forget to close the quotes and brackets.
Meta Data Descriptions
Description is a short synopsis of what your page is about. Mainly, it's used for search engines so they can describe to the viewer what is on your webpage. Start with a meta tag, only in this one, instead of keywords type 'description' in quotes. Then content= quote and type your sentence. Don't forget to close the quotes and the bracket.
Meta Tags and Sourcing
You can also use meta tags for information such as author and copyright information like this:
U.S. Internet ad spending in the fourth quarter of 2007 grew nearly 28 percent over the same quarter in 2006 to $7.3 billion, said analyst firm IDC.
For the entire year 2007, online ad revenue grew 27 percent year over year to $25.5 billion.
IDC said that Google's net U.S. market share dropped for the first time in two years because of a slow down in growth in domestic fourth quarter sales. Google's net U.S. advertising market share decreased 0.5 percentage points to 23.7 percent last quarter compared to 3Q07.
The estimated net U.S. Internet advertising sales for Google (excluding the traffic acquisition costs they pay out to the partners in their networks) grew by just over 40 percent in 4Q07, but its year-on-year growth rate in the quarter before had been 50 percent.
"If a merger between Microsoft's new media business and Yahoo! would come to pass, the combined entity would have a net U.S. advertising market share of about 17% based on our 4Q07 data," says Karsten Weide, program director for IDC's Digital Marketplace: Media and Entertainment service.
"It would not quite bring Microsoft-Yahoo! to where Google is in online advertising in the U. S., but it would give them a much better fighting chance than if they went it alone."
