This presents several pages from the same site thus minimizing search time when one site has multiple documents relevant to the search. In addition to the relevance ordering many search engines provide additional means for narrowing a search. These take the form of additional links related to the search terms. These general search hints should reduce the number of pages returned when searching for information. However, the general search routines described above are likely to produce more pages than users might be willing or have time to deal with.
Many users rely on the special search operators discussed below.
To reduce the number of pages returned from a search, special characters that tell the search engine to include or exclude words, or search for specific phrases can be used. The common characters available at all search engines are discussed first with characters specific to the sites mentioned above discussed next. When using these characters pay care attention to spaces. Some operators do not allow for spaces between the character and the search term and others required that the search term and the operator be separated by at least one space. For example a search on the terms management and discussion returns all pages with any or all of the words, in any order somewhere on the page.