Computer Department

When searching the Internet for information, it is all too easy to be overloaded by thousands of results; many of which seem a little mysterious, to say the least. But there are ways around this.

Imagine you are searching for a branch of the Walgate family but can't remember if they originated in Leeds or Leicester. Here's what to enter into Google: (The search buttons will show you the results).

Walgate Leeds OR Leicester

OR is just one of many of Google's 'advanced operators' and, in this case, has allowed you to look for Walgates associated with either Leeds OR Leicester. If you wanted to see if there were any Walgate's associated with both, you might try:

Walgate Leeds AND Leicester

There may be an occasion when you wanted to search for Walgates in Leeds, but the other Leeds, not the one in Yorkshire:

Walgate Leeds -Yorkshire

However, the results will not be quite as good as if you had tried using:

Walgate Leeds AND Kent

Having found the right Walgates, we decide to buy a map of Leeds; but only want to spend around £3-£5:

map Leeds £3..£5

So, armed with our map, we decide to do one last search before we start our journey. We know that our Walgates were something to do with education, but we're not what:

Walgate ~teacher ~school

By using the ~ symbol, we have been able to search for synonyms. Our results will include, for example; teacher, teachers, educators, lecturers, trainers and so on. We won't be limited to just schools, we'll probably also find colleges, nurseries, institutes and universities in our search results.

So, having found our long-lost ancestors, we can now tell the family over in the states; if only we'd remembered to bring our 'phone book:

Richard, Walgate, New York

If only the Google telephone directory worked for other places outside the USA! Now that would be usefully. Apparently, Richard's great-great-grandfather was the only non-teaching Walgate. He was a cordwainer, whatever that is:

define cordwainer

He left a legendary recipe for brandy-cakes but no one is quite sure of what "half a cup of brandy" would measure, and they want to get it right:

half a cup in tablespoons

and there's more...

A glance to the right of the button on the Google search page will reveal two small links; Advanced Search and Preferences. But I bet you've never pressed them! Go on, try it for yourself; you can't break it....

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