The ABC’s Of Search Engines Lesson 5: The Power Of OR

Background You should be feeling pretty confident now that you know four techniques for getting more out of your on-line searches: Thinking ahead and plan what to research Use different types of search engines The + and - sign “Quotation marks” You can narrow a search down too far and get nothing at all. You might even be excluding information that could be helpful. Here’s how to help stop that from happening.

Objective By the end of this lesson you will know: That using OR will increase the number of search results. Situations when to use the OR in a search. That combining strategies is the most effective method for getting the best search results.

Lesson If you are watching this as a slide show on your computer, sit back and watch the tutorial. If you are watching it as a class, follow along with the screen shots. Start by opening up your Internet program (Explorer, Netscape…) Then go to a search engine site, we will be using Google ( in the examples.

You learnt how to narrow down the results by using several techniques to block out information. Remember when you were getting millions of results when you were doing a search? But sometimes you want to include information such as words that have similar meanings for example air pressure OR atmosphere.

This is alright because I want to make sure that nothing important is left out on either topic. I can also see that the results shown are more in line with what I want to find out. Notice that the number of search results is higher. This time I will search for atmosphere OR air pressure

To get the best search possible I use a search engine, that allows me to combine the strategies I have learnt such as Google. Notice that although the results are high, they appear at first glance to be helpful and are on topic.

Did you know that OR is another example of Boolean logic? By using the AND (+), the NOT (-), the quotation marks and now the OR we can really harness the power of a search engine. This will help us to target the information we want with precision.

You are now ready to practice it yourself. Complete the activity sheet for Lesson 5. Remember : Using the OR in a search engine expands information in your search. Using a combination of strategies will give you the most effective search results