Search engines are very efficient at finding websites which match your search criteria, although here are a few tips to make your search a little more efficient. These tips relate specifically to Google, although most search engines will operate in the same way.

* Use as few words as possible. As Google says, ‘keep it simple’.

* Punctuation and capital letters generally do not make a difference to search results.

* The use of quotation marks around phrases tells Google you only want websites which contain that exact phrase and not websites that contain most of those words in mostly the right order.

* Use a space and a minus sign before any words you wish to exclude from a search. For example the search [monster legends -sea] will do a search for monster legends but excludes websites which contain references to sea monster legends.

* OR can be used to separate search terms in one search effort. For example the search term [data protection act 1988 OR 2003] will give you web pages which mention the DPA in relation to one year or the other, not both.

* An asterisk can be used in place of a missing word if you are not sure what the missing word should be. Google will come up with the closest match for you. For example [the grass is * greener] comes up with websites which use the phrase ‘the grass is always greener’, ‘the grass is indeed greener’, ‘the grasses is sometimes greener’ etc.