Know Your Search Engine — Part II To Find The Right Results, Ask The Right Questions

To most search engines, the plus symbol (+) means that the search you are
performing must have the word following it. So instead of typing California
AMT in the search field, typing +California +amt +tax reduces my results to
only 921,000. Not quite the time to cheer yet. Let’s make the search more
specific using phrases. Simply typing quotation marks around two or more words,
along with the plus symbol (+) ahead of the phrase, can change results drastically.

Now, a search for +“California alternative minimum tax” brings
up only 49 hits. While this is a more manageable number, it might be a little
too restrictive, since many good references might not use that exact phrase.
So, if after looking at the results, you don’t find what you need, it’s
time to fine-tune the results by backing up to +California +“alternative
minimum tax” and using other important search words.

Looking for income limits? Then add +“income limits”. Now the
number of hits has gone back up, but among the top 10 are many government websites
that should be reliable. Is your client single, married or filing separately?
Include that in your search. The more terms you use, and the more that are mandated
by the plus symbol (+), the fewer hits you will receive. Also consider including
the source of the document, like FTB (California’s Franchise Tax Board),
or IRS, SSA, etc.

In addition to the plus symbol (+) denoting words or phrases that must be
in a search return, the minus symbol (-) can be used on many search engines
to filter pages out that contain the specified word. This would be useful if
you were looking for information on a company in California named AMT, but that
had nothing to do with income tax. Most of the major ones also offer advanced
options that can be used to search for words, phrases and even numeric ranges
in specified areas of web pages (like titles, headers, tags, etc.), or to search
language-specific sites, or those with a dot-gov, dot-edu or other specific
domain suffix.

Professional Resources
Of course, searching for specific tax information on Google or Yahoo! is not
the most effective use of your time. Save the major search engines for looking
up recipes, sports trivia or the capital of Moldova. Instead, utilize one of
the many tax-specific research options for professionals. Most are subscription,
but there are free and reliable online sources, including www.TaxAlmanac.org,
www.taxsites.com or www.1040.com.
Most of the above search techniques are available on these websites, as well.
Our next review of subscription tax research options will appear in our January/March
2008 issue.

Search www.cpatechadvisor/buyersguide, too! Google and Yahoo! also aren’t
the best place to search for professional technology products and services.
Our website is, and it’s easy to search by product name or category.
When I search for something blindly on the Internet, I try to start with at
least four or five keywords or phrases. Of course, if you get too specific,
your result will be zero hits, which is about as helpful as 1.8 million. When
this happens, I make my search less specific. Also, especially when using search
phrases, think about how the words would likely appear in the context you are
looking for it.

And then there’s Wikipedia (www.en.wikipedia.org)
This not-so-little online resource has taken over the job of repository of all
knowledge and history. Well, its goal is perhaps not so grand, but as an interactive,
living encyclopedia, it allows users (experts, professionals, academics and
novices alike) to edit and enter information, while other users can continually
edit and monitor entries for factual correctness, neutral language and add citations,
pictures and links to related information. If you’ve never heard of Wikipedia
before and you have reservations after reading my description of it being user-edited,
then do a Google or Yahoo! search for “accuracy of Wikipedia” (and
remember to use the quotation marks). Number one on my search brought up a study
commissioned by the British magazine Nature that showed that Wikipedia
is comparable to the Encyclopedia Britannica in terms of overall accuracy. Now,
it is more prone to temporary bad information, but users are identifiable, and
editors are able to lock sensitive topics or breaking news items, and they can
quickly remove erroneous information. So it’s as good a reference as pretty
much anything else online, including if you want to find out who won the World
Series in 1924, what the capital of Chechnya is, or even look up a list of tax
rates around the world. It also has the entire Internal Revenue Code and its
history.

One last quick tip: CTRL+F. Hitting these two keys at the
same time allows you to search for a word or phrase within a webpage, or in
a PDF file, Word document or even a spreadsheet. It works for number combinations,
too.
Even though there are algorithms and scientific principals behind how search
engines work, the effective use of them is more of an art. It requires thinking
the way that someone else did when they wrote a document or created a website.
The goal, of course, is to be as specific as possible to get rid of bogus or
unrelated results, but to not be overly restrictive. It’s challenging,
but not impossible.

Good luck searching!