Search engines are an integral part of writing research, and often the way authors find new magazines, writing markets, or submission guidelines. However, search engines can be repetitive or biased and easily trap searchers in a scrolling loop. Here’s key advice on how to find your way around search engines.

The Writing Market Search

Searching for new submission guidelines was how I first noticed search engine pitfalls. I was getting the same results for every search, making it difficult to unearth magazines I haven’t submitted to yet – and for months, I was stuck on the same websites.

When Raven Digitalis hired me to research unique publications and guidelines for them, I found an opportunity to experiment with how to source the most unique results. Using these tricks, I contacted new, active publications, and several like Musing Mystical eagerly reviewed Raven’s Empath’s Oracle Deck.

The Trap

Search engines and other websites build a composite view of you, the user, while using their site. Cookies permit websites to collect statistical data about what you search, and everything from your search results to advertisements will carry some of this influence.

If you’ve just watched a YouTube video on coffee, you may be advertised instant coffee via another site. Searching for “coffee shops” will be more likely to show you results in your hometown or country, rather than coffee shops in Indonesia.

It’s useful for companies and consumers trying to hit a targeted market.

However, it’s less useful when authors need unbiased research or completely unique, fresh results (e.g., magazines or submission guidelines).

Clear Your Cookies (Or Use Incognito Mode)

Step one: clear your browser cookies and you’re less likely to see search results based on these traceable crumbs. Since apps and user accounts collect similar data, they impede unique results.

To clear browser cookies, navigate to Settings (or History) at the top of your browser window, and Clear All Results with the cookies-tab checked. If you want to keep user accounts logged in, uncheck Clear Browser Data.

Using your browser’s incognito mode is a way to stop most websites from tracking data for that search – and it guarantees whatever you search for won’t be influenced by previous searches.

For Chrome, click the top-right menu and select Incognito Mode. For Firefox, simply open a New Private Window.

Switch Your Search Engine

Using different search engines is an excellent way to break out of the ‘search results loop.’

Google, Bing, and DuckDuckGo are three powerful engines.

I published a feature about Ouija boards in Fate and Fortune Magazine after finding their guidelines via Bing. Using Google, the same guidelines showed up much lower down when I searched for market guides , and I might have missed them otherwise.

Search results are never the same for every person, and each search engine is a little different.

Country-Based Blocks and VPNs

‘Results not available for your country’ and ‘website blocked’ are notifications you’ll see when a country-based firewall is in the way. Unfortunately, this isn’t great if you seek unbiased research. This is why a Virtual Private Network (VPN) is important.

A VPN ‘bounces’ connectivity around countries to circumvent such blocks.  If you’re being censored, enable yourself to look around the curtain with a VPN like NordVPN, ExpressVPN, or ProtonVPN

VPNs have helped me to write unbiased international movie reviews like Gangsterism in Movies and Television and What’s the Best South African Movie Ever Made? – as well as horror reviews for Taste of Cinema.

Use Advanced Search Functions

Advanced search functions allow you to customize your results. Choose specific keywords by using quotation marks (“”), or include/exclude specific words by using the plus and minus keys (“-” and “+”).

Results can also be customized by time: last week, month, or year.  I’ve used this to find blogs that post new content, and sometimes use this to see where my writing has been recently mentioned – like on TerribleMinds or as a Wikipedia reference.

Advanced searches help me locate publications and blogs with recent posts (e.g., the past week or month), rather than staying in a loop of markets that rank high but don’t necessarily publish often anymore.

Using search engines like a superuser guarantees better, less biased search results every time.

About the Author: Alex J. Coyne is a journalist, author, and proofreader. He has written for an array of publications and websites, with a radar calibrated for gothic, gonzo, and the weird. His debut Dark History and Pop Culture Stories published via Dark Moon Press.