Have you ever set out on a journey with no particular destination in mind? That sounds a little silly, so let me put it another way. Imagine your friend invited you to a birthday lunch and told you to ask for a restaurant where a birthday party was being held once you got off the bus.

Chances are you’re going to end up in the wrong destination because although you know where you’re going, you don’t have the full information to help you get there. In essence, I have just tried to describe to you what happens when you get on the internet in search of whatever you need without a proper understanding of how to find your way around.

You might be thinking, “it’s just the internet, what could be hard about it”, but would you rather waste your precious time opening and closing unhelpful and unrelated tabs or find relevant information for your query straight away? My best guess is that your time is precious and shouldn’t be wasted.

So, how do you explore the internet?

First, there are many search engines across the world, but according to a 2021 result from a web traffic analysis tool, Google is by far the most popular search engine in the UK, followed by Bing, and Yahoo. And most of the tips I’d be sharing apply to all of them.

Now, let’s skip to the good part like the Gen Zs say these days. 

To concentrate on a particular keyword and get rid of unhelpful words in your search results, place a hyphen/minus sign/small dash immediately before the word you want to exclude. For example, typing dieting -vegan in your search bar will provide results for dieting excluding information on vegan dieting saving you time on having to scroll through a clutter of information.

Another way to generate specific results about a certain word or phrase is to enclose it in quotation marks. If you are looking for an application to sort bookkeeping for your SME, typing “bookkeeping apps for small businesses” in the search bar will prompt the search engine to search specifically for that and generate results that lead to a quick resolution of your query.

If you’re looking to find a similar website to one you already know, typing related: immediately before the website address will help you generate a list of similar websites. For example, if you want to find websites like Quora, type related:www.quora.com into the search bar and click search. Voila! The results that you’d get will show you other websites similar to the one you have searched for and save you from having to read long boring articles with clickbait titles.

Oftentimes, the top search results you get during a search are from websites that have been optimized for search engines and the fact that they pop up on the first page doesn’t mean that they will have the best information. Also, the first set of results you’d see are mostly going to be advertisements. They’ve been placed there to sell to you and if you’re looking to buy, that could be a good place to start. Otherwise, keep scrolling.

Read Also: HOW THE INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA IS REVOLUTIONIZING REMOTE WORK

Another thing you need to have at your disposal is the patience to verify every link and advert before clicking, signing up or making payments. We live in a fast-paced world but a moment of wrong decisions can haunt you for life. To avoid regrets, you can check how safe a web link is by copying it into a link checker like Google Transparency Report where you can know the status of a website as at the time you intend to visit it.

Lastly, to explore the internet in 2022, you need to simplify your search words. Unless it’s really necessary, exclude prepositions, conjunctions, and articles from your searches. These words generate more results than you need and the goal is to save time and have a good experience. So, keep it simple.

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