5 Tips to Search Properly

How many times have we said to ourselves or to a coworker “I need the memo Joe sent last week on the 2Q numbers.” Now, is it still in email? Did you file it in Dropbox from your mobile device? Or is it a desktop file?  Before you start searching for the file, take a minute to think about the best way to do so.  These tips should help to make your searches more productive and convert a search into a FIND.

1.     Prepare to search: Make sure you know what you’re looking for. Going back to the memo from Joe, do you in actuality call it a memo? How can you find what you’re looking for if you can’t remember the specifics? Try and think of a unique word that will help narrow down your results. Joe is keen on using words like extraordinary, which will reveal fewer results than all emails from Joe, 2Q, which will yield a quarter’s worth of files.

2.     Use search to narrow your search: Don’t be scared to use more than one search to get your results. Search within your results to keep narrowing your list down. In this case, we start with extraordinary results, which yields files from every quarter and early quarter estimate from the past 5 years. The second search adds the name of the newest and biggest client signed in 2Q, which reduces the number of results.

3.     Learn search syntax: Using quote marks on your keyword search terms or use search terms such as NEAR, AND, OR to significantly  narrow the accuracy of your returned results. Try “extraordinary results” Joe NEAR “big, new customer’s name” and we’re getting closer.

4.     Organize your search by dates: Narrow your results by narrowing down the timeline  We know we want 2Q results, which are always released 2 weeks after the close of the quarter so narrow the search to July 1, 2015 and more recent and voila, you found the results file. Obviously, I wrote these tips to build on the one previous, but you can without a doubt, skip or combine steps to find exactly what you need without involving your neighbor in the next cubicle, your assistant or make Joe resend the file  so it’s at the top of your inbox.

5.     All the above apply to a web search plus a final one. i.e. try a different search engine. If you always use Google, try Bing, Yahoo or Dogpile and your results may vary.

While search implies carefully or thoroughly seeking something, would you not prefer to find what you need more by happenstance and ease? This can happen to you if you understand the best way to search for needed documents and other files.  Happy Finding.