Here are some basic understandings and tips on how to us search engines.

Typing  a word into the most major search engines will have the search engine bring up websites or web pages relative to the word.

Using Quotes:

Putting quotes around your phrase(2 or more words) will have most search engines show web pages that contain the phrase. If you don't put quotes around your phrase, the search engines will show web pages that contain the phrase as well as all combinations of the words in the phrase.

Using the + symbol:

Using he plus symbol in front of words you're searching for will have most search engines search for web pages that contain all the words. For example, if you search for the words 'cat mouse', the search engines will show websites with 'cat', 'mouse','cat mouse' or 'mouse cat'. If you search for '+cat +mouse', most search engines will show only web pages that have both the words 'cat' and 'mouse' in them.

Using the - symbol:

The minus symbol is handy if you want to search information about a certain word but don't want to see certain related material. For example, if you wanted to search for information on smartphones, but didn't want to get info on iphones you would you enter in a search phrase something like this 'smartphone -iphone -iphones -apple'.

Combinations

Now that you know the basics of search engine query terminology, you can combine symbols to really narrow down your searches.

Example: 'todays news' -'fox news' -cnn