Why Use the Plus Sign When Searching the Internet

With the arrival of the Internet, the world is your oyster.  Unfortunately, it’s not just your oyster, it’s anybody’s and with a pearl of information, you find a whole lot of junk.  Along with reputable companies, advertisers, spammers, bloggers, and other Internet users all vie for your attention.  If you’ve heard of the plus sign and you’re wondering, why use the plus sign searching the Internet, your life is about to become a whole lot easier.

The problem

If you’ve never used the plus sign when searching the Internet, you probably shake your head in frustration wading through pages and pages of useless information.  You know what you want, you formulated your request in your favorite search engine, but you still have to put up with bogus sites, websites with misleading ads, link farms, and false listings.

The solution

Next time when you use a search engine, start you search with the plus sign (+).  As an experiment, say that you’re looking for information on owls.  Type “owls” in the search engine and you’ll be presented with 72 million listings.  Now type “+owls” in the search engine and you’ll only get 71,000 listings.  The plus sign removes all the rig raff.

What does the plus sign do?

The plus sign removes (almost) all undesirable info from your search.  The plus sign tells the search engine that whatever you’re looking for has to include the word that you specified.  If you’re looking for owls, the search engine will only bring up information on those birds and will ignore pages that link themselves to info about owls.

Broaden your search

In addition to the plus sign, try broaden your search for a particular item.  For instance, if you’re looking for sugar free drink, don’t type just drinks in the search engine.  Typing “+drinks” produces about 8,660 results, while “+sugar free drinks” generates only 2,300 results.  Try to be as specific as possible.

Where it goes wrong

Clever advertisers know that subjects such as “love”, “employment”, “pets” and “cars” are hot topics.  They link their marketing pages to those popular sites and as a result you get flooded with millions of search results.  Fortunately, a few search engines are on to those advertisers and eliminate their ads automatically.  Still, it doesn’t take long to type a plus sign before the word or term you are searching for, letting the search engine know that you are not willing to put up with useless pages.

When it gets worse

You might find that, at certain times of the year, you get presented with more and more junk pages while looking for valuable information.  The problem is obvious, annual celebrations such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Mother and Father’s Day bring on a stream of advertisers all trying to lure you to their sites.  

Wonder no longer about why use the plus sign searching the Internet, try it, you’ll be pleasantly surprised and save a whole lot of time finding what you’re looking for.

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Do job seekers have rights?

All over the world people have rights. Men have rights, women have rights and children certainly have rights. African Americans have rights, gays have rights, the disabled have rights and a whole lot of other people have rights too. The only people who do not seem to have rights are job seekers.

Potential employers can engage in false advertising, toy with their emotions, offer them less than minimum wage salaries, and when they complain they don’t have a leg to stand on.

Anna (not her real name) who complained about false advertising received the following message from the Ministry of Labour.

This issue is not covered under the Employment Standards Act. The Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA) sets out minimum rights for most employees in Ontario workplaces by setting standards for such things as payment of wages, public holidays, hours of work, overtime pay, vacation time and pay, pregnancy, parental and personal emergency leave, and entitlements to notice of termination (or pay instead of notice) and severance pay. Hiring is not covered under the ESA.

In another instance Anna applied for a job where the employers offered her less than minimum wage. Again she complained to the Ministry of Labour. To the best of her knowledge, paying less than minimum wage is against the law. 

Apparently it isn’t. The law on minimum wage might as well not have been written, because employers can pay whatever they want. It’s up to the employee to take it or leave it.

This time Anna got this message.

This issue is not covered under the Employment Standards Act.The Employment Standards Act, 2000 (ESA) sets out minimum rights for most employees in Ontario workplaces by setting standards for such things as payment of wages, public holidays, hours of work, overtime pay, vacation time and pay, pregnancy, parental and personal emergency leave, and entitlements to notice of termination (or pay instead of notice) and severance pay. Minimum wage is not covered under the ESA.

This is not very encouraging. Companies can advertise jobs that don’t exists, can pay whatever they want, and according to the Ministry of Labour it’s none of their concern. When will the law give job seekers some rights?