Help with Web Search

antenna tuner Model AT-150

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  http://www.ebay.com/sch/Tuners-/48711/i.html

Thank you for the rapid replies. Seems there is an art to typing in a search request to Google, I see your answers are exactly (more or less) what I need.

When I type in things, I usually get the bull by the wrong end and end up with the results that I do get. Shall have to try wording things more to the likings of the engine....

Thanks again fellows.

Rod.

Rixter, thank you. That is the type of information I needed, I have printed it out and will laminate it and keep it by the computer. I have been frustrated for years trying to get a simple (to me) search without all the added garbage.

This has done it.

Again thank you.

Rod

Many times when you are having trouble getting exact results you can back your way into better results.

For example, you said searching for at-150 got you a lot of links for Ford F-150 pickup trucks.

You can narrow results by re-searching with the original search terms but also adding -ford to your search criteria. For example:

at-150 -ford -"f-150" (use quotes to ensure the dash in f-150 isn't interpreted as another minus sign)

This should remove all the ford links from the results. Then, after looking at the new results you can further narrow your results by adding more -(minus) terms.

The quotes could also be used with "at-150" to direct the search engine not to look for variations within "at-150", ie, treat it literally. Beware that this can over limit searches severely.

There are other methodologies that can be used to refine searches built into the browsers. I'd recommend you spend some time on this page, learning the tricks the pros use.

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en

This was common stuff we used before the World Wide Web and web browsers using search tools that were available then.

Hooker

G'day Hooker, thank you for your input as well, See my reply to Rixter both extremely good answers

Regards,

Rod

As well as using the '+' you can also search on specific strings by using quotes.

If the thing was made by a company called Rotarola then

"Rotarola at-150"

Being very specific can be a good thing or a bad thing - spelling mistakes or word order, if I was resorting to the above I would at least try with or without the hyphen, its case insensitive.

I use this one a lot, there are times its just not enough having the correct words, they need to be next to each other and in the right order.

Talking of unwanted hits on similar words or phrases with radically different meanings...

The specification for steel I use in sheet form has code CR4, guess how many times I hit this pesky forum when I want to hunt around for suppliers? Even worse the secondary term "steel" crops up on this forum with alarming regularity! - shame on the forum founders for choosing an engineering spec code for the name of an engineering forum - google behaves like a fly around cow s*** !!

If Google arent doing it already I would suggest some kind of meta-tag "buying / not-buying" so at least you can throw away half the results who want to sell when you want to learn or alternatively throw the results who want to educate when you simply want to buy. Guess its not black and white, people who sell also often want to inform but all the same......

Lots of useful tips to help you, one search type not mentioned is how to get to pages buried miles down in the Google list of hits.

You often get a million hits and although Google allows you to click on the first few pages going deep at one page a time is slow.

I would like to know if there is a short cut to say page 100,000.

How do you jump to these pages and beyond?

You must have poor quality Search Engines in your area or country.

Just now, with one input "Antenna Tuner AT-150" was returned with ICOM AT-150.

Now you have a manufacturer and model to continue your search or contact icomamerica.com/amateur.

Good Luck!

It's all in how you word it. I put in: "at-150 antenna tuner", and bing, over a million hits.