Searching the Web isn't hard. Finding what you're looking for is the challenge.

Forget power searching. Don't worry about learning to do a Boolean search.

"All most people need to know is a little basic Search Engine Math to improve their results'', says Danny Sullivan, an Internet consultant who maintains the web site Search Engine Watch. It is easy to add, subtract and multiply your way into better searches at your favourite search engine.

The Five Rules of Search Engine Math 1 . Be Specific Some words are so common that they appear in millions of pages. Take the word weather, for example. There are thousands of sites providing weather information, from local forecasts to treatises on meteorology. Tell the search engine exactly what you are looking for. Rather than merely searching for "weather,'' construct a query like "Boston weather forecast''.

You also will have a harder time finding what you are looking for if you use a homograph as a search word. Homographs are words that are spelled identically but have different meanings and sometimes different pronunciations. For example, the sea "bass'' swam around the "bass'' drum on the ocean floor.

2. Use The 1 Symbol to Add Use the 1 symbol when you want to make sure that a search engine finds pages that have all the words you enter, not just some of them. The symbol is especially helpful when you do a search and then find yourself with too many links. Imagine that you want to find out about herbal medicine to treat arthritis. If you simply search for arthritis, you will get hundreds of links to pages describing every type of arthritis, and every type of treatment. Instead, try searching for all the words you know must appear on the type of page you're looking for: arthritis herbal treatment 3. Use The - Symbol to Subtract Sometimes, you want a search engine to find pages that have one word on them but not another word. The - symbol lets you do this. Imagine you want information about the Titanic shipwreck in 1912 but don't want to be overwhelmed by pages about the movie Titanic. You could search this way: Titanic -movie.

This tells the search engine to find pages that mention "Titanic'' and then to remove any of them that also mention "movie.'' In general, the - symbol is helpful for focusing results when you get too many links that are unrelated to your topic. Simply begin subtracting terms you are not interested in, and you will get better results.

4 . Use Quotation Marks to Multiply As in normal math, multiplying through a "phrase search'' can be a much faster way to get the answer you are looking for. For example, if you want information about Bermuda lobsters, you could enter Bermuda lobster. The search engine will find pages that contain the word Bermuda and lobster, but there's no guarantee that the words may necessarily be near each other. You might get a page that mentions Bermuda in the opening paragraph but then talks about all the different kinds of lobsters in the Atlantic. All the words you specified appear on this page, but it still is not be what you are looking for.

A phrase search avoids this problem. With a phrase search, you tell a search engine to give you pages where the terms appear in exactly the order you specify. You do this by putting quotation marks around the phrase, like this: "Bermuda lobsters''. Now, only pages that have all the words and in that exact order will be listed. The answers should be much more on target than with simple addition.

5. Combining Symbols When you can add, subtract and multiply, you can combine symbols to easily create targeted searches. For example, imagine you want to invest some money, but do not trust all the dot com start-up companies, and you have worked in the medical profession, so are interested in biotechnology. To find information about biotechnology investments and avoid pages about investing in dot com companies, you would enter: investment biotech "dot com''.

A Few of the Major Search Engines The search engines below are considered to be "major search engines'' because they are well known. There are other "major search engines''. These search engines work with the Search Engine Math tips.

Though they might seem similar, search engines use different ways to gather information. Not all of the services below are "true'' search engines that crawl the web. For instance, Yahoo uses "directories'' that depend on human beings to compile their listings. A true search engine use software "robots'' to scan the millions of web pages and compile indexes automatically.

If you choose the best search engine for your particular search, you will not only get better results, you'll spend a lot less time coming up with frustrating or useless results.

Do you need information about an uncommon topic? Try: http:/www.altavista.com / Because AltaVista is the largest web index with over 31 million web pages and 4 million articles from UseNet Newsgroups, it will find the most pages about rare or uncommon subjects.

Do you just want an answer to a plain English question? Check out: http:/www.askjeeves.com / Ask Jeeves is a human-powered search engine with over 7 million common questions. If it fails to find your question in its database it will provide matching web pages from other search engines.

Are you looking for information about a city, company, or sports team? Go to: http:/www.excite.com / Excite prioritises results for these types of searches, presenting you with city information including maps and weather, company news and information, and sports schedules, stats, and scores.

Do you want to see the most popular Web sites on a subject? Search at: http:/www.hotbot.com After you search for something at HotBot, you can click on the "Get the Top 10'' Most Visited Sites For Your Query link, at the top of your results list.

Do you just want some general Information? Go to: http:/www.yahoo.com / Yahoo is the web's most popular search engine and has a well-deserved reputation for helping people find information easily. The secret to Yahoo's success is human beings. It is the largest human-compiled guide to the web, employing about 150 editors in an effort to categorise the web.

There are some specialised search engines that only display pages relating to a particular topic just as some libraries, such as law or medical libraries, only have books related to their speciality.

There is a search engine that specialises in keeping track of web sites that relate to Bermuda called Surf Bermuda (http:/www.surfbermuda.com).

The Surf Bermuda search engine contains links to sites that relate to Bermuda or sites for Bermudian businesses, both off-shore and local.