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FREE REPORT
Search This Site
5 Minutes To Better Re-Searching
by Ed Duvall
http://www.cashway.com
We all like to think of ourselves as resourceful individuals who have acquired some skills
and abilities for doing research, either online or offline, and with a little focus and
effort we can find information on a subject using the resources available to us.
Gotta love those Search Engines...
From databases to encyclopedias if you know how to find 'em, you can almost always find
some relevant information about the subject you're looking into.
But what if you want to do a more in depth search for information and maintain what you've
found in an easily recognizeable format? Does it seem to get a little more complicated?
Maybe even confusing?
So if you could improve not only the way you find information but also store and retrieve
it, do you think you'd be better at what you're trying to achieve either online or
offline? You bet you would!
One of the most frustrating areas on the internet is that of information. There is a huge
abundance of unverified information, opinions stated as truths and downright
misinformation accessible to any and everyone who wants it. But you can take some steps to
improve your research and undestanding of the information you gather by making a few
simple changes to the way you do your searches and maintain the information.
So whether you're searching for good reliable business, technical, health, etc information
where are you going to find it on the Net?
Search Engines are key to finding a lot of information on the Net. Better yet they are
more valuable as a tool to find other Resources from which you can gather reliable
information from, including databases and archives. There are several major ones hundreds
of smaller one. My experience is to go only with the Free search engines and not the pay
for listings ones. Why? Simply the fact that Free search engines tend to present an
unbiased list of web pages based on the content as related to your search terms.
Pay per listing search engines rank their pages according to the highest bidder of a site
usually trying to sell you something and not necesarily the most relevant information.
They're good for people looking for specific subjects but you should be cautious and work
on verifying the content through sources located in the free search engines.
Now you've decided on the Search Engines you want to use. What's next?
For as long as I can remember, no great or small undertakings have been accomplished with
out a plan and some sort of strategy. You should do the same when doing your research via
the internet, or other methods for that matter.
A basic plan and strategy should have clearly defined steps such as these:
1 -- Decide what subject, area or questions you want information about.
2 -- Identify the best sources to use (Search Engines, Directories,corporate sites,
associations, organizations, government, etc.)
3 -- Have your file system in place to maintain your information.
4 -- Do your search and Stay Focused on #1 above. Being distracted or side tracked by
"other non subject" information is one of the biggest obstacles to completing an
accurate worthwhile search.
When you look at the steps above you'll see that #1,#2 and #4 are intergral to the
information gathering process. Step #3 is a step that you must follow through with in
order to be able to later access and analyze the information you've located. I suggest a
simple system that you set-up in your Bookmarks section of your browser. Your main folder
would be Research with subfolders for each subject you want to research. Within each
Subject folder you may want to set up folders for the spercific categories of information
you're looking for. These could be as simple as associations, Government, Business,
demographics, people, etc. But you should establish one that is meaningful and viable to
you.
Now if you're not familiar with the subject matter you're after if may take you longer to
come up with relevant information. You may want to add an additional subfolder to the
subject folder for webpages or information you're not sure are going to be useful for
analyzing the subject or answering your questions.
One final note. If you do any amount of research or surfing on the Net and you don't have
a descent system for maintaining the information you've found, then you may want to extend
the History section of your Browser to cover a longer time frame. You can always refer
back to the History section to see what websites you've visited. It's a very time
consuming process but at least you can see where you've been. To increase the time frames
for the History section:
1 -- Click on Tools
2 -- Click on Internet Options
3 -- A Pop Up screen appears. Find History (towards bottom in I.E). It will say something
like Days to keep pages in history. Accross from this will be a form box with Up and Down
arrows. Increase the number of days. Between 90 and 180 days should be plenty for most
people. You can do a lot more if you want.
So in review...
Develop a basic plan and strategy, Decide what your subject is, Identify the best sources,
Do your search and Stay Focused and have your file system in place to maintain your
information.
If you have these clearly defined steps in place and use them on a regular basis you
should be able to improve you research techniques, save time on future searches and
improve the quality and reliability
of your information.
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About the author. Ed Duvall owns and operates http://www.cashway.com. where you'll find
ebooks, software and strategies for generating traffic to your site, internet marketing
and business on the internet.
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