Using search engines effectively

In short: With precise search terms and a few operators one finds better results faster. Keywords instead of whole sentences are usually more efficient.

In more detail: Search engines search an index and rank by relevance; the results are no guarantee of truth.

In detail

• Keywords: Important terms, formulated specifically.
• Quotation marks: “exact phrase” searches for exactly that expression.
• Minus: “jaguar -car” excludes hits with the term.
• site: “site:wikipedia.org topic” searches only one website.
• filetype: “filetype:pdf manual” finds PDF files.
• Time range: Filter for recent results.
• Advertising: Ads are often marked; do not click blindly.
• Evaluation: Check source, date and author (medienkompetenz-und-fake-news-quellen-prüfen).
• Going deeper: Use several sources and specialist databases.