When I was in school, I remember studying learning styles – “series of theories suggesting systematic differences in individuals’ natural or habitual pattern of acquiring and processing information in learning situations.” I was the always the Converger, very hands-on, figuring out things for myself, testing theories. For me, this started at an early age. I can remember being one of the first students in middle school to harness the power of the internet around 1992 – 1994. I remember discovering Lexus Nexis, Alta Vista, and later Yahoo to read academic papers and abstracts. Writings, facts, opinions, that just weren’t available in my school library, were now available on the computer. I learned how to draw information at my fingertips by using search engines. Even in the early days, this was way more informative than an old encyclopedia and way more fun!
Fast forward to my college years, my search engine skills continued to progress. As I learned C++, VB Script, and Java, I relied heavily on the internet for the most up to date information on techniques, theory, and examples. Books simply couldn’t keep up with the power of the internet and its ever growing database of information. It was a great way for me to learn and get through college; and it continues to be a very sharp tool in my tool belt today.
In this post, I’m going to show you a few search engine tricks so you can Bing your way to success!
1. Use Quotes to Find Exact Results
Simply putting double quotes around any phrase will limit the search results to pages with that exact word combination. A typical search without quotes will return results with any of those words in the page. Bing does a good job of sorting the results by relevance, but this trick is handy if you’re looking to find something specific.
2. Use the Negative (-) Sign to Exclude Results
Simply add a minus sign before any term to exclude results with that term from your search. I love this when a new update or server release happens. If you search for “SharePoint Reusable Content” a bunch of results will be from 2007 when that feature was most prominent. Try this instead –
3. Search a Specific Site
In the Microsoft world, there are 3 main websites for us to find technical information about the products – MSDN, TechNet, and Office.com. If you want to search a specific site, add “Site:” to the beginning of your search. This works great for developers looking for the official version of content and not a blog republishing.
4. Search By File Type
This one comes in handy especially for PowerPoint presentations. Microsoft produces all sorts of these as well. For me, they are very helpful when I’m putting together a technical presentation. Try –
That’s it for today, I hope you find these tips useful. For more tips and tricks stay tuned to this blog!
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by Joe Crabtree on August 20th, 2014 | ~ minute read
