As a library school student with a Masters degree in French, I have completed many hours of searching online and I have a lot of experience in searching databases.
Here are some useful hints:
1.When searching in the search engines, try to be as specific as possible.
For example:
You type in "fundraising" and the results have nothing to do with the topic.
The reasons why this happens are many but in essence you need to specify more clearly what you are looking for. A better search would be "fundraising groups" or "non profit groups" or fundraising+groups, or non-profit+ groups. You can also
subtract a word as well. For example: home+business-sales. This type of searching is called Boolean searching. A lot of people don't know how to do it properly, and this is important if you want to obtain maximum results. You can also use what is called a wild card. In most search engines and databases this is represented as an . For example, fund* will bring up results with all of the words beginning with fund and with any endings, such as funds, fundraiser, fundraising, etc.
A good website to go to for an explanation on how this works is:
http://library.albany.edu/internet/boolean.html.
2.Remember that all search engines are not the same. The content and order in which the sites are listed varies from search engine to search engine. For maximum results you should always search in at least three different ones. It is also a good idea to try directories and some of the lesser known search engines. Don't just assume that because something isn't in yahoo or google that it isn't a good resource.
3.Try going to the website for your local public library. Often you can gain access to specialized databases from their site simply by owning a library card for the county in which you live. For example: the website for the Monroe county library in Indiana where I currently live, offers its patrons access to the associates unlimited database and reference USA among many others. These databases are excellent resources for finding information on companies and individuals.
4.Look and see if there are any specialized databases available for use on a state wide basis.
In Indiana, there is an excellent database called INSPIRE. It offers access to articles in newspapers, magazines and much more.
