Spell words correctly
Use keywords to search-These are the nouns or significant words in your research questions.
Use Boolean operators-These are words (connectors) placed between search terms to narrow or expand a search. They are: AND, OR and NOT.
Truncation-This allows you to search the "root" form of a word with all its different endings by adding a symbol to the end of the word. e.g. bank* will yield results with words such as bank, banking, bankers and bankruptcy
Note. The asterisk * is the most common truncation symbol but there are others but databases vary. e.g. bank! bank? bank+
Check the help feature to ascertain the truncation symbol used.
Utilize phrase searching-It allows you to retrieve specific information from commonly used phrases. e.g. "social networking"