A search engine is a website that you can use, to type in a a phrase and get a list of other websites that pertain to your "searched" phrase. Search engines list the results usually in order of relevance and importance to your particular query, but the way they sort out what is relevant and what is important differs from search engine to search engine. So the first piece of advice is - Do not limit your searches to just one search engine as the results will often differ.

Using search engines such as Google or Yahoo to search for specific property can be a bit frustrating as it is very easy not be specific enough, and just get too much information to make any sense.

Have you noticed the adverts on the right and bottom of AlgarveAgents.com?

These are called google "adwords". Don't be afraid of them, they are just adverts people have paid to be there, and they can sometimes be more relevant than the terms you searched with. The reason why people pay for these adverts is that it is extremely difficult for a website to get within the first 2 pages of a google search. - (statistically people only look at the first 2 pages when they use search engines).

Adwords are context sensitive, which means they only show advertisments that are relevant to the website you are looking at.

USING GOOGLE

Google is the number one search engine at the moment, and it is probably how you found AlgarveAgents.com.

I have provided an easy way to search google in the top left hand search box of this website.

It is very easy to be too generic when searching.

For example: type in "villa portugal" in "Google Search".

What you will get back is over 4 million results!

Try any of the links on this search page....

...is it what you want?

....probably not.

That's because "Villa" and "Portugal" are more commonly used by people who are searching for holidays in Portugal - so google thinks it's more relevant to display results pertaining to holidays.

Try instead "villa" and a location such as "loule" and "for sale" and the results will be a lot more satisfying. The more specific you are, the better your results will be.

OTHER SEARCH ENGINES

Google is not the only search engine and it sometimes pays to try others as well, as they quite often have different results for the same search term. Try YAHOO and MICROSOFT MSN SEARCH as two of the more popular alternatives.