One of a programmers most underrated ability is his ability to search for information on the Internet. Even the best of us can not remember every detail of a framework’s syntax. Sometimes we have a problem which we do not want to solve on our own, because we hope someone already has solved it.
But finding the right words to describe what we are exactly looking for can be difficult.
Here are 4 tips to improve your search results and get faster to the best results!

Note: I use Google Search as an example here, but the shown techniques can probably be applied elsewhere, too.

1. Be specific

There are question which are too abstract, so they can have way too many different answers and provoke very subjective and personal opinions. Some examples:

• How to start programming
• How to learn Java
• How to get rich
• Where to get pizza

The query “How to start programming” has 278,000,000 results (which is not very accurate, btw). So it is important to filter out what is uninteresting for us. Google usually does a good job at that, offering you the best it can on the first page, but you can do more about it.

First ask yourself: ‘What do I really want to know?’ You probably want to know a nice overview of how a program works and how to create your own. There you have it. You created 2 statements which will bring you closer to a satisfying result:

• How a program works
• How to create your own program

These searches still give a very waste amount of information, so start by searching in the first 3-5 results for better keywords. For my own search, I found How to Create a Program by wikihow, which reveals:

If you want to create your own programs, you will need to be familiar with at least one programming language.

So there it is. You need to learn a programming language. So start again with your search:

• Which programming language to learn?

We can still optimize this query, to get even better results:

• Which programming language to learn 2015
• Which programming language for beginners
• easy programming language to learn

So try to be specific on what you are looking for. If you do not know exactly what you are looking for, get more specific the more information you gather.

 

2. Adapt to the results

Consider the following problem: We have a Java program where we get a text the user types in and output it on the screen. So you want to know how to take the text the user put in and use it? After reading my previous advice, we start with:

• get the text from the user in java

You can tell from the titles of your results if your search was good or not. In this case, I get ‘How to get input from user in java’ as first result, which is confusing, because: What is input? So we should try to change the question to fit the results. Let’s try with:

• get input from user in java

Now you get a lot more results containing the words ‘input’ in the title. For example: ‘How to read input from console’. So you ‘read’ from the console? Okay..let’s try again!

• get input from console in java

There you have it. Lots of results containing input and console in java. Now we have enough resources to search through.

Remember: Try different words based on what you find in the results. The search algorithms out there are really smart and usually know what you really meant to search!

 

3. Unnecessary words are unnecessary

Some words simply do not help to find correct results. There are two types:

1. Too specific

Look at this search terms:

• how to count the letters in a string in java

Sure, you get some results with this, but how about taking a shortcut and getting even better results?

• letter count string java

This search terms are easier, because the main words you are looking for are there, without other words possibly changing the results. I guarantee you, this will get you the better results.

Google automatically filters out extremely common words like ‘a’, ‘here’, ‘in’ or punctuation to save space. These are called Stop words and are available for different languages. You can save a lot of time by avoiding them!

2. Irrelevant information

Of course you want to be as spot-on as possible and leave out any unimportant information. So do not write:

• count letters java windows 8
• count words java eclipse

Java does not really care if you count the letters on Windows 8 or on a Mac, or if you use Eclipse or Notepad to edit your code. So try to be specific, but filter out obvious facts.

 

4. Do an advanced search, if available

Most search engines have advanced search tools, which you can use to filter the results even more. There are filters for date, time, country, language or even file type. But more on this in the next article!

Take this advice with you on your next online search and impress your friends and co-workers with your amazing search skills!