Would you like to improve your search results?
Let’s face it, who wouldn’t? Through another blogger I recently discovered a great website that will help both Teachers and students improve their search outcomes and get better results. For many years Teacher Librarians have talked glowingly about using Boolean operators to get the best search results. A good search will get the number of hits down to a less than staggering level and provide improved relevance of results. Boolify is a great site that actually shows you in a more visually attractive way how the Boolean operators work to improve those results. Check my screenshots to see the difference between using one search term [for this example - eating disorders] 190,000 estimated results & compare that with the results achieved with adding extra search terms with the Boolean operators 314 estimated results. With more thought the results could be improved further. Using just broad terms will always cloud the issue with irrelevant sites which can lead to frustration and confusion. Let’s all try to improve our search skills, it will feel good and get the job done.
