Find the information you need
The World Wide Web is a mine of information available to anybody with a computer and access to the Internet, but the idea of trawling through this enormous resource to find what you are looking for can seem a little daunting. With the Timeshare industry in mind, we have put together this short guide to help you get the most from your Internet searches.
To find the material you're after if you don't know the exact website address, you will need to use a search engine. The most popular is Google, followed by Yahoo!, Bing and Ask. The trick is to enter your criteria or search term in the right way, so that your search results produce exactly the type of information you want.
Typing keywords into the search engine will bring up websites that are most relevant to those words or phrases. You should decide what topic you want to research, be as succinct as you can and be careful to use the correct spelling. It doesn't really matter whether you use upper or lower case - but most search engines recognise lower case, so this is recommended.
To get even better results use phrases of two or more words to pinpoint what it is you're looking for. For example, "timeshare exchange" or "vacation ownership". You will also get different results depending on the way you order the words so, ‘timeshare resale' will bring you different results than ‘resale timeshare'.
*Enclosing your phrase in quotation marks means the search engine will look for websites that include exactly that phrase, no variations.
*"www timeshare com" - a common mistake
You should enter your keywords or phrase in the search box within the search engine site and there is no need to include "www". This is part of a website address and should only go in the address bar at the top of the Internet page, when you are typing in the address of a particular website you want to visit. If you know the correct address, you can type it straight into the address bar, e.g. "www.timeshares.com". You will be surprised to know that a staggering 4,400 searches are made globally every year on the search phrase "www timeshare" and even though this search phrase is wrong, companies are now using phrases like "www timeshare" and "www rci" to attract visitors to their sites.
Say for instance you want to find information about RCI and you don't know the name of its website. Instead of typing into Google "www rci co.uk" or "www rci com" simply enter "RCI" into the search box and its website is likely to appear at the top of the results list. Similarly, if you want to search for Timeshare in general you can just type "timeshare" rather than "www timeshare". Another popular search is "timeshare hypermarket" - be sure to enter these words and not "www timeshare hypermarket".
Phrases such as "www.timeshare.com" are not valid search terms, so stick to individual words.
Remember: "www timeshare exchange", "www vacation ownership" and so on, should be entered as "timeshare exchange" and "vacation ownership".
*You don't need to include words like "a", "the", "he", "it", "and", "or", "to" or "from" in your keyword phrase. Search engines actually filter these words out because they are so common, and find nouns the most useful - for example "timeshare exchange" (not "www timeshare exchange").
*Try to avoid redundant terms
It might take you a few tries to be successful in your Internet search. But with millions of documents online to delve into, the more precise you can be when using a search engine the better your results will be.
