Friday, March 27, 2009

Online Forms how to find them effectively!

By Alexa Chevalier

Great news " the form(s) you are looking for are online! Bad news - when you search for online forms you get 60,000,000 results in Google alone. Finding that one form you need, can truly be a discouraging chore.

In comes the role of the search engine " they are there to make your life easier " right? Well yes, if know how to search, then they are an efficient tool to locate that hard to pin down form you are trying to find. Here are some hints and tips to find what you require.

Step 1 - be as explicit as possible. Fuzzy searches can be frustrating and unsuccessful.

Step 3 - Always search for two or more words (ideally two " six). If you search for a single word, you will retrieve millions of results. The best search engines to use are Google, Yahoo, Ask, and/or MSN.

When the Internet was brand spanking new, everyone was encouraged to narrow their search results by using Boolean terms. This permitted the searcher to searching was very popular " this allowed a person to confine their search by using the terms and, and not, and or. Initially this worked very well " until search engines assigned different meanings to these words. Today, we can limit our results by using three simple symbols which are double quotes, the + sign and the " sign.

Double Quotes ( "" ) this tells the search engine that the result must be exact and that your keyword phase must be returned in the result. For example IRS tax forms.

A plus sign (+) between the keywords you are searching for . The results returned by the search engine will have all of your keywords, either in the title, the URL or on the webpage. An example would be download+legal+forms.

The minus sign (-) use this when you do not require a particular word to be returned. For example, Tax forms " Canada.

When all else fails, take few more minutes and click on the search engines advanced search tab. Advanced Search varies amongst the search engines, however, you just need to fill in the appropriate fields and the engine does the work for you. It is much faster to use the symbols, and 95% of the time you will get the returned result you were seeking. - 15790

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