Finding just what you want with the search function takes a little bit of practice and knowing a few tricks of the trade will help immensely. Here are a few tips to help you find precisely what you are looking for:
1. Mind your P's & Q's (and the rest of the alphabet too while you're at it).
In other words, watch your spelling. If you misspell a word in your search, you are not going to get any results. And lest you think I am stating the obvious, know that Atomz sends me a summary of searches done on the site each month, and a goodly portion of the searches are indeed misspelled words. If you are unsure of the spelling of what you are looking for, you can use the asterisk symbol to help you. Type in the beginning letters of the word followed by the asterisk; and the search results will find any words on the site that begins with those letters.
For example, suppose you are trying to find information about Titanic's sister ship, but you can never remember whether it has two T's (Brittanic) or two N's (Britannic), or both (Brittannic)! In the search field type in Brit*, and you will get the correct spelling (which is Britannic, by the way). You are also going to find every other word that starts with Brit, like Britain, British, Britania, etc. But by scrolling down the list of results you will find the specific word you were hunting for.
2. Type in as few words as possible.
If you are looking for A Night To Remember and you type in all four words, you will get 180 search results! That is because the search engine will find every listing with A, with Night, with To, and with Remember. To avoid this, type in as few words as possible, and try to use just the words that best describe what you are hunting for. By typing in just Night Remember, for example, you will get around 30 search results, and these results should have a closer match to what you were actually looking for.
3. Use quotes to search for an exact phrase.
Putting your search in quotes tells the search engine to look for the phrase exactly as you have entered it. By putting the name in quotes: "A Night to Remember", you will get even fewer search results, around 10. If you know the precise title or phrase you are looking for, using quotes will give you the results that match your search request exactly.
4. You can also exclude the terms you know you don't want to see.
You can use the minus sign to tell your search to ignore specific results. Suppose you want to find information about the book concerning the film A Night to Remember. You can't remember the author's name, but you know it sure wasn't Walter Lord. By using the minus sign, you can tell the the search engine to ignore the word Lord. This is how you would type in that search: "A Night to Remember" -Lord. You will drop down to just one or two results, including the book about the film by Jeffrey Richards.