Searches in newspaper sites return a variety of results and are not always perfectly accurate. This is because indexes have been input over time by many hands, some newspapers are scanned and uploaded locally and might not have full text files, whereas others might be processed and uploaded with all the files for full text search with hit highlighted results; some are hand-transcribed while others are transcribed by a computer with varying accuracy. Here are a few tips on how to navigate those results and more closely identify the material you are looking for.
When you search a name or phrase, your results might include:
Use the options on the advanced search screen to refine your search, or use the facets that may appear with your search results to narrow the results...
The Fuzzy search will broaden your search by looking for similarly-spelled words as the ones you entered. This is why a Fuzzy search on Macdonald also finds McDonald and Macdonalds. Going even Fuzzier will return "Donald" as well. It's a good setting to use if you're not sure you have the correct spelling of a given term, or if you're researching a name that may have changed its spelling over time.
Fuzzy Dates allow you to set a date range instead of searching a specific year. You can enter 1905 and set the range to look for "within five years," which will return anything tagged from 1900 to 1910. Some records may not have a year set, only a decade, or its own range - from earliest to latest guess. If your range (1900-1910) intersects with a record's range (for example, 1909-1925) it will be returned, to give you the broadest possible results.
The Geographic Location limits your search to records tagged with that specific place name. Some of the records in the index may not be indexed by place, and would not appear in the results. Sometimes, places are contained by other places (a bay in a lake, or a village in a township, or a "harbor" in a town). You will need to search each term separately. It is a powerful way to narrow results but use it with caution.