Too much information. Too little information. That's often what you get when you try to find something on the Internet. Performing a good Web search is a skill, and Carol Meyer of search engine company Northern Light (northernlight.com ) has mastered it, and fortunately she shared some of her insights with us. She put together these tips, based on a list from the search-engine guide Lookoff.com.

• Read the help section. Find out if the site supports Boolean operators–terms such as "and" and "not" that can be used to include or exclude results. For instance, to find information on wireless radio frequency data communication (RFDC), you might enter "wireless AND RFDC NOT telephone." If the site supports Boolean operators, the help section will tell you what the protocol is.
• Find out whether the site will find variants of your search term. Sometimes you'll automatically get results that include variants: "materials" as well as "material." But that's not always true. You may have to use a wildcard character–usually an asterisk–to find word variants: conveyor* would find pages with the words conveyors, conveyorize, and conveyor. Again, consult the help section.
• Don't let advanced search features scare you. Advanced searches are often easier than the regular search option. Typically, labeled boxes let you perform specific queries. With Northern Light's Power Search, you can specify words that appear in the Web address. To track down something you saw on a site with "handling" in its name, you'd type "handling" in the "Words in URL" box.
• Choose phrases over multiple keywords. Typically, putting quotes around multiple words ensures they're treated as a phrase. For instance, entering "bar code" would filter out a page with the sentence "the dress code does not bar jeans." At some sites you might instead use a check box to specify that you want an exact phrase match.
• List results in the way you find convenient. You may have the option to block out multiple hits from the same site, for instance.
• If you get poor results, re-execute your query. Try using Boolean operators or an exact phrase match.
• Don't give up.