Nowadays we are spoiled by the always improving search results search engines like Google, Bing or others provide us. Many times it’s enough to just enter only the first three letters of our question into the search box to get good suggestions and relevant hits.

However, sometimes the algorithm seems to be barking up the wrong tree, showing only misleading pages about totally different topics. In that case, you can narrow down your search to find what you are looking for.

As an example, I want to find out more about the favorite objects feature in ADT. So, I simply enter the following into the search box: adt favorite objects

The first couple of results are misleading: They point to a plugin for ADT called “ABAP Favorites”. The plugin seems quite popular, so the page rank is high. The other results on the first and even the second page don’t look relevant, either. So, what now?

Use quotes

This might be one of the oldest most widely known tricks for many search engines, but it is still very effective: Using quotes.

Searching for adt “favorite objects” gives me a SAP Help Portal topic about ABAP repository trees as the number one search result. It contains info and further links to favorite objects in ADT, just what I was looking for.

Exclude Terms From Your Search

If you want to exclude terms from the search result, type a minus “–“ before the search term. For example: “favorite packages” abap -workbench

The results will then display only hits which don’t contain your “non-word”.

Combine Your Search

To combine your search terms, you can use AND / OR. As an example: adt AND “ABAP Development Tools”

Use Search Operators

You can use search operators for further specifications. Operators are different depending on the search engine you are using. The most common ones are:

site:example_url.com – search only within a specific web site.

intitle:keyword  – search for pages that contain your keyword in the page title.

inurl:keyword – search for pages that contain your keyword in the page url.

Search on SAP Help Portal

Maybe it’s just too obvious: You can also go to help.sap.com and search for a relevant help topic there. The SAP Help Portal has lots of helpful features to personalize your search, look at your search history and manage your favorite pages and products. For more information about the SAP Help Portal, see:

Customize Your SAP Help Portal Experience | SAP Blogs

Ready, Set, Go! SAP Help Portal Pages Are Here! | SAP Blogs

Related Blog Posts:

https://blogs.sap.com/2014/08/02/my-tips-to-use-google-advanced-search-to-find-more-abap-resource/