Stop words...

…are found in all search engines, from library databases (such as EBSCO PsycINFO) to web search tools such as Google, Bing and Yahoo!. They are words which the search engine will ignore because they are simply too common. For example, ‘the’, ‘a’, ‘if’ and ‘but’ will not be searched for. Normally this poses no problem, but what if you are searching for a specific phrase, such as ‘children in care’ or ‘vitamin A’? Well, on some databases the use of speech marks resolves the issue e.g. “children in care”, while others, such as Google, are clever enough to realise that the ‘a’ in ‘Vitamin A’ is a key component of what you are looking for. However, many databases, including those found on EBSCO, will ignore the stop word regardless of whether speech marks are included – there is no way to force the search engine to look for that word. Slowly but surely the people who make these search tools are recognising the problems this can cause and making changes – the Web of Knowledge database has recently abolished all stop words – but if you are using a search engine which hasn’t yet made this change, then the best advice is simply to find alternative terms or descriptions for what you are looking for.