Find the thing you were actually looking for
Get better answers in fewer attempts, spot which results were paid for, and check a suspicious message in fifteen seconds.
You want the pharmacy’s Sunday hours. You type pharmacy, and get pharmacies in every town in the country.
A search box does not know where you live. It matches words, so the whole skill is in what you hand it.
Key points
- Say where you are and what you want to know, not only what it is called
- Quote marks find an exact phrase — the most powerful tool in the box
- Sponsored results are advertisements; scroll past them by habit
- To check a message: one sentence in quote marks, the company’s name, the word scam
What to remember
- The third errand turned on one thing: a sentence lifted from the email, inside quote marks.
- Never reach a bank, an energy company or a courier through an ad — type the address, or use your bookmark.
- Fraud is sent in millions, so you are almost never the first to see it. The bank’s own warning page, Consumer Reports or the FTC usually appears in the first three lines.
Try this
Take a message you were once unsure about and put one sentence from it in quote marks into a search.
Practice: Find the thing you were actually looking for. Your first lesson is free, with no account or card; the rest are part of a Lantern plan. Interactive lessons require JavaScript.