Tech Table Tuesday, July 8, 2014
July 8, 2014
Justin: Welcome to MPA’s Tech Table. I’m Justin.
Diana: And I’m Diana.
Justin: And we’re your hosts. We’ll be serving up a heaping spoonful of all things tech.
Diana: We promise it’ll be easy to digest.
Diana: Well hello there, Justin. It is Tuesday.
Justin: Oh my goodness, yeah, it’s Tuesday alright.
Diana: [LAUGHS]
Justin: And before we went on the air here, we were having a beauty consultation between you and our engineer, Noel.
Diana: Well, that’s just the best thing to talk about right now.
Justin: Yeah, for you. I almost fell asleep over here.
Diana: [LAUGHS] That’s alright, go ahead.
Justin: Yeah, I know, I’ve never heard anything like nail art.
Diana: Nail art.
Justin: What is that?
Diana: Art for your nails. [LAUGHS].
Justin: I don’t understand and I don’t need to understand.
Diana: There’s a rhyme or reason there that you do certain colors, and shapes and…
Justin: Sounds like ways to spend money to me.
Diana: Yeah, yeah, that’s about right.
Justin: Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Alright, so let’s get on to our tech topic here.
Diana: Okay.
Justin: Using plus, minus and quote symbols to narrow your searches.
Diana: Yeah.
Justin: That’s our topic today.
Diana: Yeah, your searches online.
Justin: Right.
Diana: Right.
Justin: So, like, nail + art. Is that what you’re talking about?
Diana: Yes, yeah. [LAUGHS].
Justin: I don’t know, you’ll have to explain it to me. I never use these things, so…
Diana: [LAUGHS] Okay. Well let’s say you’re looking up apples on Google. If you were to just type in the word apples, you get 22 million returns.
Justin: Okay.
Diana: Or there about.
Justin: Sure.
Diana: You know, give or take.
Justin: Give or take a few.
Diana: [LAUGHS] That’s actually a few more sites than you can check in an afternoon.
Justin: Well yeah, 22 million’s probably a few. Absolutely.
Diana: Yeah, so we need to narrow the search down a bit.
Justin: Sure.
Diana: So then let’s say that you’re actually, truly interested in green apples.
Justin: Alright, so I’m getting…see where this is going. You’re gonna type apples + green.
Diana: Yes, apples + green. And we were…we’re talking about the plus symbol.
Justin: Yeah, the plus symbol, don’t type out the word, but use the plus symbol. So it’s like apples + green + nail + art. Green apple nail art.
Diana: Whoa. That’ll be very interesting to see what comes up.
Justin: Well there you go.
Diana: But now, if you put in apples + green, now you will only see the apple sites that also have the word green on them.
Justin: Right, but you’re probably still gonna get like 6 million or so returned websites.
Diana: Yes, but 6 million is many, many fewer than 22 million.
Justin: So you actually can subtract a word from those search results.
Diana: You can.
Justin: So if you type in apple + green – computers, then you’re gonna get about 1 million returns.
Diana: Right, because if you think about apple, sometimes Apple computers come in the color green.
Justin: Exactly.
Diana: So you have to get rid of all those computer things.
Justin: There ya go.
Diana: And how do you know that? If you’re looking at the search results that are coming up from, say, apples + green, and you’re seeing a bunch of computer things, just take out that computer word with a minus.
Justin: Sure.
Diana: Yeah, so now we’re down to about a million.
Justin: Million returns, but that’s still about 5 million webpages that it returns. So the final way to narrow down the search is to use the quotes to narrow the search down to an exact phrase. So you could do…if you’re looking for granny smith apples, you do apples + green, then the subtract the computers, and then use quotes around granny smith.
Diana: Yes, now you’ll only see websites that have the word granny smith on them, in that order…
Justin: My goodness.
Diana: …spelled exactly that way. So you gotta make sure that they are spelled correctly. And that…exactly, using quotes is a great way to narrow your search. So we went from having 22 million webpages returned from our original search for apples, to around only 220,000 for the last example.
Justin: That’s unbelievable. That’s unbelievable. So basically, by the time you figure out all your search stuff, you could use green apple nail art and bake a apple pie.
Diana: You could. Just try the whole thing.
Justin: There you go.
[LAUGHTER]
Justin: Just kidding. So yeah, take a look at using plus, minus and quotes to narrow your searches. Until next time…
Diana: Take care.
Justin: Tech Table was brought to you by MPA of Bloomfield, Iowa, and God’s Country Radio. You can visit us online at askmpa.com.
Diana: If you have questions or comments, please send them to questions@askmpa.com. That’s questions@askmpa.com
Justin: And thanks for listening!
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