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Phrases make words rare
Tutorial Home >Internet >Basics >How to Find People Online >How do I search for phrases instead of words?
Tutorial Home >Internet >Online services >How to Find People Online >How do I search for phrases instead of words?
Tutorial Home >Internet >Basics >How to Find People Online >Find Your Friends >Phrases make words rare
Tutorial Home >Internet >Online services >How to Find People Online >Find Your Friends >Phrases make words rare | |
| | Just put quotation marks around two or more words and AltaVista will treat those words as a phrase. In other words, it will search for instances of all those words appearing in exactly that order. When you search for ian gonzalez, you get every instance of ian and every instance of gonzalez, with the pages where both those words appear coming up on top of the list of matches. When you search for "ian gonzalez," you only get pages where those two words appear in that order, with nothing in between. | | | |
| | Sometimes the first name and last name are not enough. If your friend has a nickname, add it in a phrase, in whatever position is natural (e.g., "Jim Catfish Hunter"). Basically, the more words in your phrase, the fewer the matches you should get and the more likely that they will actually refer to the person you want to find. | | | |
| | If your friend has and uses one or more middle names, use them as part of a phrase (e.g.,
"Richard Harding Davis," "Henry Wadsworth Longfellow").
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| | If your friend has and uses one or more initials, use them as part of a phrase. In this case, you do not need to use periods, but keep in mind that spaces do matter -- in other words "R W B Lewis" is different from "RWB Lewis". If you think the name might appear on a Web page in either of those forms, search both ways. | | | |
| | If it so happens that your friend is commonly known by a title -- not just a one-word nickname, but a phrase, like "King of Flatbush" or the "Queen of Canasta" try that phrase alone or with the words of his/her name. | |
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