Here are five tips to help you search for what you need on the web:

1. Google: In the left column of Google’s search page is a “More” link. Check that out. One useful possibility I like is the Blog search. Another is Realtime, which allows you to search Twitter and Facebook postings.

2. Just below the right corner of Google’s search window is a little link, “Advanced.” That unlocks many opportunities that you may not know about. A very useful feature is date range, which allow you to see the latest results on your topic.

3. Google remembers you. An easy way to see how is to you try a search with Google in another browser than your main browser. If you search for something you have searched for a lot, you will see totally different results in each browser. (This only works if you are logged out of Google on one of the browsers.) So don’t get excited if you search for yourself and see your site at the top – unless it’s true for your searches on both browsers!

4. There are more search engines than Google. Try DuckDuckGo and Blekko. Both will provide results that you won’t get using Google. Blekko’s slashtag tool can be very useful. Here’s a video that explains why. DuckDuckGo gives you one giant scrolling page of results, which can be helpful if you don’t use a tool like AutoPager for Firefox or Chrome.

5. Google Alerts are a great way to have updated search results sent automatically to you via email.

Bonus Tip: YouTube is the second biggest search engine on the web. Get some videos there! (Note to Greener Grass Media: do this.)

Happy searching!

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