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Help on Search
Simple Search
Searching for a single word
Just enter a word in the "Search for" box and click on the "Search" button.
Searching for more than one word
To search for more than one word, there are two basic approaches:
- If the words must appear together in the text, enter the words in
the "Search for" box, separated by a space. For example,
type in "government legislation" to find these two words
together in the text.
- If the words must all appear in the text, but not necessarily together,
use the AND keyword. For example, if you are looking for information
about testing for executive positions, you might type in "testing
AND executives".
Case sensitivity
For most searches, it is best to type in all search words in
lower case. This will return all occurences of these words, no matter
what the case is in the text. For instance, searching for "system" will
return pages with the words "System" and "system".
If you use upper case letters in search words, the search will be case
sensitive. For instance, searching for "System" will only return
pages with the words "System" and not pages with the word "system".
Boolean searches
You can use boolean operators AND, OR and NOT in your searches.
For more information, read the next section on the Advanced Search.
Advanced Search
To perform an effective search, you need to know how to use the query
operators. You can only do Boolean searches, so all the subsequent information
is based on Boolean search rules.
Note
The query operators are not case-sensitive. The examples use uppercase
for clarity only.
The search engine interprets the search query based on a set of syntax
rules. The search results are ranked for "importance," which
means how close the matched word comes to the originally input search
criteria. In the example below, region would rank higher than
any of the stemmed variants.
For English language searches, by entering the word region, the
actual word region and all its stemmed variations (such as regions and regional)
are found.
Not all queries rank their results. For example, queries that check whether
a given string matches the value in a field cannot perform a comparison:
either the string matches the value or it doesn't. The same is true for
checking whether a string is contained in a field, or begins or ends a
field.
This section discusses these topics:
- Default Assumptions
- Search Rules
- Determining Which Operators to Use
- Query Operators: a Reference
- Using Wildcards
Default Assumptions
The search query language has some implicit defaults and assumptions
that dictate how it interprets your input. In some cases, you can circumvent
the defaults, but here is how the search engine decides what you want
as the search results:
< STEM> - Search finds all documents that contain any stemmed variant of
the search word or phrase. The search engine looks at the meaning of the word,
not just its spelling. For example, if you want to search on plan, the
results would include documents that contain planning and plans,
but not those that contain plane or planet.
< MANY> - Search considers how often the search word or phrase appear in
the found documents and ranks the results for frequency (or relevancy).
< PHRASE> - Search considers words separated by spaces to be part of a
phrase. For example, Monterey otter is interpreted as a phrase and both
must be present and together to be found. Such a search would not find documents
containing sea otter or Monterey Bay.
Note
In any case where it's not clear that two words are to be considered
as a phrase, you can use parentheses for clarity. For example,
<PHRASE> (rise "and" fall).
OR - Search considers each word or phrase in the query separated by
a comma to be optional, although at least one must be present. In effect,
this is an implicit OR operation. For example, Monterey, otter is
interpreted as searching for documents that contain either Monterey or otter.
Note that angle brackets are not required for OR.
Search Rules
To create complex searches, you can combine query operators, manipulate
the query syntax, and include wildcard characters.
This section discusses these topics:
- Angle Brackets
- Combining Operators
- Using Query Operators as Search Words
- Canceling Stemming
- Modifying Operators
Angle Brackets
With the exception of the AND, OR, NOT, and the date and numeric comparison
operators, you need to enclose query operators in angle brackets, as in <CONTAINS> and <WILDCARD>.
Combining Operators
You can combine several query operators into a single query to obtain precise
results. For example, you can input the following query to limit your search
to those documents that have Bay and Monterey but to exclude
those that mention Aquarium
Monterey AND Bay NOT <CONTAINS> Aquarium
You can achieve even greater precision by including some implicit phrases,
as in the following query that finds documents that refer to the Monterey
Bay Aquarium by its full name and also mention otters but do
not refer to shark:
Monterey Bay Aquarium AND otter AND NOT shark
Using Query Operators as Search Words
You can use any of the query operators as a search word, but you must enclose
the word in quotation marks. For example, you could search for documents
about the ebb and flow of the tides with the following query:
< CONTAINS> ebb "and" flow
Canceling Stemming
You can cancel the implicit stemming by using quotation marks around a
word. For example, you can be exact by using a query such as this:
" plan"
This search only results in documents that contain the exact word plan.
It ignores documents with plans or planning.
Modifying Operators
You can use AND, OR, and NOT to modify other operators. For example, you
may want to exclude documents with titles that contain the phrase theme
park. A query such as this would solve this problem:
Title NOT <CONTAINS> theme park
Determining Which Operators to Use
Use the following reference to help determine which operators to use. Note
that the query language is not case-sensitive, so <starts> and <STARTS> are
equivalent. This document uses uppercase for clarity only.
Table 6.1 Deciding which operator to use
Type of Search
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Valid Operators
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Examples
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Finding documents by date or numeric value comparison.
Dates must be in the format YY-MM-DD (e.g.: 01-12-31).
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is equal to (=),
greater than (>),
greater than or equal to (>=),
less than (<),
less than or equal to (<=)
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DATE >= 99-06-30
Finds documents created on or after June 30, 1999.
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Finding words or phrases in specific document fields
or in specific locations in the field.
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<STARTS>,
<CONTAINS>,
<ENDS>,
is equal to (=)
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Title <STARTS> Help
Finds documents with titles that start with Help.
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Finding two or more words in a document.
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AND,
<NEAR/1>
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specifications AND review
Finds documents that contain both specifications and review.
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Query Operators: a Reference
The following table describes some commonly used operators and provides
examples of how to use each one. All are relevance ranked except where
explicitly noted.
Table 6.2 Query language operators
Operator
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Description
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Examples
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| AND
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Adds mandatory criteria to the search. Finds documents
that have all of the specified words.
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Antarctica AND mountain climb
Finds only documents containing both Antarctica and mountain
climb plus all the stemmed variants, such as mountain climbing.
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| <CONTAINS>
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Finds documents containing the specified words in a
document field. The words must be in the exact same sequential and
contiguous order.
You can use wildcards. Only alphanumeric values.
Does not rank documents for relevance.
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Title <CONTAINS> higher profit
Finds documents containing the phrase higher profit in the
title. Ignores documents with profits higher in the title.
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| <ENDS>
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Finds documents in which a document field ends with
a certain string of characters.
Does not rank documents for relevance.
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Title <ENDS> draft
Finds documents with titles ending in draft.
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equals (=)
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Finds documents in which a document field matches a
specific date or numeric value.
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Created = 6-30-99
Finds documents created on June 30, 1999.
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greater than (>)
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Finds documents in which a document field is greater
than a specific date or numeric value.
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Created > 6-30-99
Finds documents created after June 30, 1999.
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greater than or equal to (>=)
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Finds documents in which a document field is greater
than or equal to a specific date or numeric value.
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Created >= 6-30-99
Finds documents created on or after June 30, 1999.
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less than (<)
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Finds documents in which a document field is less than
a specific date or numeric value.
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Created < 6-30-99
Finds documents created before June 30, 1999.
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less than or equal to (<=)
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Finds documents in which a document field is less than
or equal to a specific date or numeric value.
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Created <= 6-30-99
Finds documents created on or before June 30, 1999.
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| <MATCHES>
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Finds documents in which a string in a document field
matches the character string you specify.
Ignores documents that contain partial matches.
Does not rank documents for relevance.
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<MATCHES> employee
Finds documents containing employee or any of its stemmed
variants such as employees.
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| <NEAR>
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Finds documents that contain the specified words. The
closer the terms are to each other in the document, the higher the
document's score.
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stock <NEAR> purchase
Finds any document containing both stock and purchase,
but gives a higher score to a document that has stock purchase than
to one that has purchase supplies and stock up.
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| <NEAR/N>
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Finds documents in which two or more specified words
are within N number of words from each other. N can be an integer
up to 1000. Also ranks the documents for relevance based on the words'
proximity to each other.
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stock <NEAR/1> purchase
Finds documents containing the phrases stock purchase and purchase
stock.
Ignores documents containing phrases like purchase supplies and
stock up because stock and purchase do not appear
next to each other.
When N is 2 or greater, finds documents that contain the words within
the range and gives a higher score for documents which have the words
closer together.
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| NOT
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Finds documents that do not contain a specific word
or phrase.
Note: You can use NOT to modify the OR or the AND
operator.
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surf AND NOT beach
Finds documents containing the word surf but not the word beach.
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| OR
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Adds optional criteria to the search. Finds any document
that contains at least one of the search values.
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apples OR oranges
Finds documents containing either apples or oranges.
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| <PHRASE>
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Finds documents that contain the specified phrase.
A phrase is a grouping of two or more words that occur in a specific
order.
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<PHRASE> (rise "and" fall)
Finds documents that include the entire phrase rise and fall.
The and is in quotes to force the search to interpret it as
a literal, not as an operator.
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| <STARTS>
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Finds documents in which a document field starts with
a certain string of characters.
Does not rank documents for relevance.
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Title <STARTS> Corp
Finds documents with titles starting with Corp, such as Corporate and Corporation.
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<STEM>
(English only)
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Finds documents that contain the specified word and
its variants.
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<STEM> plan
Finds documents that contain plan, plans, planned, planning,
and other variants with the same meaning stem. Ignores similarly
spelled words such as planet and plane that don't come
from the same stem.
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| <SUBSTRING>
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Finds documents in which part or all of a string in
a document field matches the character string you specify.
Similar to <MATCHES>, but can match on a partial string.
Does not work with wildcards.
Does not rank documents for relevance.
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<SUBSTRING> employ
Finds documents that can match on all or part of employ, so
it can succeed with ploy.
Note: This works with literals only. If you input
web*, the asterisk does not work as a wildcard, so the search succeeds
only with the exact "web*" string.
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| <WILDCARD>
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Finds documents that contain the wildcard characters
in the search string. You can use this to get words that have some
similar spellings but which would not be found by stemming the word.
Some characters, such as * and ?, automatically indicate a wildcard-based
search, so you don't have to include the word <WILDCARD>.
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<WILDCARD> plan*
Finds documents that contain plan, plane, and planet as
well as any word that begins with plan, such as planned, plans,
and planetopolis.
See the next section for more details and examples.
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| <WORD>
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Finds documents that contain the specified word.
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<WORD> theme
Finds documents that contain theme, thematic, themes,
and other words that stem from theme.
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Using Wildcards
You can use wildcards to obtain special results. For example, you can find
documents that contain words that have similar spellings but are not stemmed
variants. For example, plan stems into plans and planning but
not plane or planet. With wildcards, you can find
all of these words.
Some characters, such as * and ?, automatically indicate a wildcard-based
search and do not require you to use the <WILDCARD> operator as
part of the expression.
Table 6.3 Wildcard operators
Character
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Description
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*
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Specifies 0 or more alphanumeric characters. For example,
air* finds documents that contain air, airline, and airhead.
Cannot use this wildcard as the first character in an expression.
This wildcard is ignored in a set of ([ ]) or in an alternative pattern
({ }).
With this wildcard, the <WILDCARD> operator is implicit.
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?
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Specifies a single alphanumeric character, although
you can use more than one ? to indicate multiple characters. For
example, ?at finds documents that contain cat and hat,
while ??at finds documents that contain that and chat.
This wildcard is ignored in a set of ([ ]) or in an alternative pattern
({ }).
With this wildcard, the <WILDCARD> operator is implicit.
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{}
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An alternative pattern that specifies a series of patterns,
one for each pattern separated by commas. For example,
<WILDCARD> `Chat{s, ting, ty}`
finds documents that contain chats, chatting, and chatty.
You must enclose the entire string in back quotes and you cannot
have any embedded spaces.
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[ ]
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A set that specifies a series of characters that can
be used to find a match. For example,
<WILDCARD> `[chp]at`
finds documents that contain cat, hat, and pat.
You must enclose the entire string in back quotes and you cannot
have any embedded spaces.
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^
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Specifies one or more characters to exclude from a
set. For example, <WILDCARD> `C[^io]t` finds documents that
contain cat and cut, but not cot.
The caret (^) must be the first character after the left bracket.
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-
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Specifies a range of characters in a set. For example, <WILDCARD> `Ch[a-j]t`
finds documents that contain any four-letter word from chat to chjt.
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Wildcards as Literals
Sometimes you may want to search on characters that are normally used as
wildcards, such as the *or? expression. To use a wildcard as a literal,
you must precede it with a backslash. In the case of asterisks, you must
use two backslashes. For example, to search on a magazine with a title
of Zine***, you would type:
< WILDCARD>Zine\\*\\*\\*
Several characters have special meaning for the search engine and require
you to use back quotes to be interpreted as literals. The special search
characters are listed here:
- comma ,
- left and right parentheses ( )
- double quotation mark "
- backslash \
- at sign @
- left curly brace {
- left bracket [
- back quote ` (Note: You can only search on back
quotes as literals if your server administrator has set this up.)
For example, to search for the string "a{b", you would type
< WILDCARD>`a{b`
For another example, if you wanted to search on the string "c`t", which
contains a back quote, you would type
< WILDCARD>`c``t`
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