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Understanding General Syntax Conventions
Both the simple and advanced search functions use the same syntax rules regarding phrasing, case sensitivity, and finding related words.
Words and Phrases
Verity Search defines a word as any string of letters and digits that is separated by either
- White space, such as spaces, tabs, line ends, or the start or end of a document, or
- Special characters and punctuation, such as %, $, /, #, and _
For example, Verity Search interprets and indexes HAL5000, 60258, www, http, and EasierSaidThanDone all as single words, because they are continuous strings of characters, surrounded by characters that are neither letters nor digits. The software indexes all words that it finds on a web page, regardless of whether the word exists in a dictionary or is spelled correctly.
Searching for Phrases
You can use Verity Search to find phrases, or groups of related words that appear next to each other. To indicate a phrase in a search query, enclose the words with double quotes. Phrasing ensures that Verity Search finds the words together, instead of looking for separate instances of each word individually. For example, to look for the phrase personnel policies, type
"personnel policies"
If you did not use the double quotes, Verity Search would find instances of "personnel" alone and "policies" alone, as well as any instances where the two words happen to appear together. Enclosing the words in quotes indicates that you want to find only instances of both words together.
Punctuation
Verity Search ignores punctuation except to interpret it as a separator for words. Placing punctuation or special characters between each word, with no spaces between the characters and the words, is also a way to indicate a phrase. As an example of when punctuation might be useful in indicating a phrase, consider searching for a telephone number. Entering
1-800-555-1212
is easier than entering "1 800 555 1212", which is an equally acceptable syntax, but is less natural. Hyphenated words, such as CD-ROM, also automatically form a phrase because of the hyphen.
Normally, however, using double quotes to indicate a phrase is recommended over the use of punctuation between words, because some special characters have additional meaning:
- In both simple and advanced searches, you can use the asterisk (*) as a wildcard indicating that you want to find all words containing a match for the specified pattern of letters.
- The + and - characters are operators that help to filter the results of a simple search.
- The &, |, ~, and ! characters are operators that help to filter the results of an advanced search.
Case sensitivity
Case sensitivity of a search is based on the case in which you enter your query.
- A query in all lowercase letters results in a case-insensitive search.
For example, if you enter turkey in the query field, Verity Search will find all occurrences of the word turkey, including those spelled TUrkey, TURKEY, turkey, and so forth.
- If your query contains any uppercase letters, the search is case-sensitive.
For example, if you enter Turkey in the query field, Verity Search will find all occurrences of Turkey with initial capitalization only. It will not return documents containing the words TURKEY or turkey.
Multinational characters
Verity Search supports exact-match searches for characters in the ISO Latin-1 character set. That is, you can enter a word containing an accent or other diacritical mark, and Verity Search will find only documents with the accented spelling of the word.
For example, if you search for the French word éléphant, Verity Search will find only documents containing an exact match for the French spelling of the word.
Entering a word with mixed case and an accent, (for example, Éléphant) would produce only results that match the word in terms of both case and accent.
If you omit accents and other diacritical marks from a search query, Verity Search finds documents containing words both with and without the special marks. Although this feature might produce some irrelevant results for users doing an English language search, it enables users to enter queries for non-English words even when they do not have international support on their keyboard.
To support searching for special characters without their diacritical marks, Verity search makes a mapping to the closest possible plain character or combination of characters. The software then indexes words in both forms: with special characters as they appear, and also with special characters replaced by the mappings. The following table illustrates the special characters and their mappings:
| Character(s) | Mapping | Character(s) | Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|
| Æ | AE | æ | ae |
| Á Â À Å Ã Ä | A | á â à å ã ä | a |
| Ç | C | ç | c |
| Ð | D | ð | d |
| É Ê È Ë | E | é ê è ë | e |
| Í Î Ì Ï | I | í î ì ï | i |
| Ñ | N | ñ | n |
| Ó Ô Ò Ø Õ Ö | O | ó ô ò ø õ ö | o |
| Þ | TH | þ | th |
| Ú Û Ù Ü | U | ú û ù ü | u |
| Ý | Y | ý ÿ | y |
| ß | ss | ||
Finding related words
You can use the asterisk wildcard notation ( * ) to search for a group of words that contain the same pattern. This is convenient for finding derivatives and spelling variants of the same word.
For example, to look for the word sing and any derivatives, such as singer, singers, and singing, enter sing* in the query field. Searching for cantalo* will produce matches for cantaloup, cantaloupe, cantalope, and their plurals.
Notes
- A wildcard search can produce words that match the pattern of your query but are unrelated to what you are looking for. It is sometimes possible to change the placement of the wildcard character to reduce the number of irrelevant results. For example, if you want to find matches for both color and colour, a query of the form col*r could also find matches for the words collector and collider. Submitting a query for colo*r is more precise, and results in matches for both color and colour.
- To limit extraneous searching, Verity Search requires that you specify at least three letters in front of the * notation. Also, the wildcard matches only lower-case characters (not capital letters or digits), and interchanges with a maximum of five letters.
- If your search notation results in matches that are too numerous to be meaningful, Verity Search displays a message similar to the following:
Ignored inte*: 4292323
The example message indicates that there are more than four million instances in the index of words starting with "inte". Consequently, Verity Search does not return any results, because the query is not specific enough to be useful.
Choosing Between Simple and Advanced Search
Both the simple and advanced search interfaces are equally powerful and flexible, and there is not that much difference in how difficult they are to use.
Advantages of Simple Search
The main advantages of the simple search interface are
- Verity Search ranks results automatically based on a series of factors that ensure that the most relevant documents appear at the top of the results list. For details on how ranking works, see How the Results are Ordered.
- You can use a conversational style to enter queries. Entering several words separated by spaces indicates that you want to find documents containing any or all of the words (documents containing all of the words will be listed first).
For example, suppose you want to find a recipe for muffins that includes either apples or pears, but ideally would contain both fruits. You could enter the series of words apple pear muffin recipe. If any document contains all four words, automatic ranking places that document at the top of your results list. Documents containing only some of the words would be next, and documents containing only one of the words would be ranked last.
- You can enter a query in the form of a question: for example, What is the company policy on vacation leave? and Verity search sorts out the most important words in the phrase and return a list of documents containing those words.
- You can use the + and - symbols as simple operators that require the presence or absence words in a search (for details, see Doing a Simple Search).
Advantages of Advanced Search
The advanced search interface requires a more precise, logical syntax which, although it is more exacting, also gives you more control over the results of your search. Using the apple pear muffin recipe example, suppose you decide that you do not want to see any documents unless they contain at least the words muffin and recipe. In advanced search syntax, a more precise rendition of the simple query would be (apple OR pear) AND muffin AND recipe.
You can optionally enter your own ranking rules in the advanced search interface. If you do not enter any ranking rules, Verity returns the results in no particular order.
Although the two interfaces offer basically the same features, advanced search does offer some capabilities that are not available with the simple search:
- You can use the NEAR operator to find two words located within 10 words of each other.
- You can confine your search to documents from a specific time period.
- You can get a count of the number of documents that meet your search criteria. This is useful, for example, if you want to get an idea of how many web pages contain links to your own home page.
For additional information on using the advanced search interface, see Doing an An Advanced Search.
Doing a Simple Search
Simple searches use general syntax rules regarding phrasing, case sensitivity, and use of the asterisk (*) as a wildcard character. In addition, two operators can help to narrow a simple search:
| This Operator | Does This |
|---|---|
| + | includes only documents containing all specified words or phrases in the search results |
| - | excludes documents containing the specified word or phrase from the search results |
Specify the operator in front of the word that you want to include or exclude, with no spaces between the operator and the word.
Simple search examples
To find the documents most relevant to your needs, construct your query as precisely as you can.
- To increase the likelihood that the most relevant documents will appear at the top of the list, enter several synonyms for the topic for which you are searching.
Example: Querying for sandals leather footwear instead of just one of those words increases the chance of finding documents about leather sandals.
- Use quotation marks to group several words into a phrase.
Example: bicycle "for sale" finds documents that contain both the phrase for sale and the word bicycle.
- Use the wildcard notation (*) at the end of a word stem to find related words.
Example: quilt* finds the words quilts, quilter, quilting, and quilted.
- Use the + and - operators to further refine your search.
Example: noir +film -"pinot noir" finds documents containing both noir and film but not the phrase pinot noir.
How the results are ordered
Verity ranks the results of a search based on a score that includes these criteria:
- Whether the words or phrases are found in the first few lines of the document (for example, in the title of a web page).
- The frequency of occurrence of a query word or phrase. Rare words in a query are weighted more heavily than common words (rarity is determined by the number of occurrences of the word in the index).
- Whether all of the specified words or phrases appear in a document. A document containing all three words specified in a three-word query would rank higher than a document containing only two or one of the words.
- Whether multiple query words or phrases are found close to each other in a document.
If you are not happy with the documents that Verity ranks first as the result of a search, you might need to narrow the scope of your search.
Doing an Advanced Search
Advanced queries use the same general syntax rules as simple queries, but they offer more options for refining a search based on operators and expressions. With the advanced query feature, you have more control over the results of your search, and you also have to be more precise in order to get the results that you want.
Advanced search syntax
You can group words into phrases as you would do for a simple search. However, you must use an operator to combine several words or phrases in the same search. The advanced search operators are as follows:
| Keyword | Symbol | Action |
|---|---|---|
| AND | & | Finds only documents containing all of the specified words or phrases. |
| OR | | | Finds documents containing at least one of the specified words or phrases. |
| NOT | ! | Excludes documents containing the specified word or phrase. |
| NEAR | ~ | Finds documents containing both specified words or phrases within 10 words of each other. |
You can enter the keywords in all uppercase or all lowercase. Using uppercase is a convenient way to distinguish the keywords from words that are part of your search. Entering symbols instead of keywords is also an option, although it can make the query more cryptic and less conversational.
Notes
- If you need to use a word such as OR or NEAR in a query, enclose the word in double quotes to distinguish it from the keyword of the same name. For example, you could enter Portland AND (Oregon OR "OR") to look for either Oregon or its postal service abbreviation.
- Verity Search follows a default order of precedence (near, not, and, or) for interpreting a query that has several operators. For complex queries, however, it is recommended that you use parentheses to indicate the order in which you want the search engine to interpret the operators.
- The simple search operators (+ and -) are interpreted as punctuation, not logical operators, in advanced queries.
Advanced search examples
The following examples illustrate how to use operators and parentheses to construct an advanced search query.
- (apple OR pear) AND (tart OR pie)
- This query requests that either of the words apple or pear appear in the same document with either of the words tart or pie.
- John NEAR Kennedy
- The operator NEAR ensures that both John and Kennedy are within ten words of each other in any document resulting from the search. The NEAR operator is often useful in searching for names because of the possible different forms that the name can take. The example query would find all of John Kennedy; Kennedy, John; John Fitzgerald Kennedy; and John F. Kennedy.
- vegetable AND (NOT broccoli)
- The operators AND NOT ensure that documents found contain the word vegetable but not the word broccoli.
Note that the syntax vegetable NOT broccoli (without the AND) returns a syntax error. When NOT appears in a position other than the beginning of a query, use AND to connect the NOT portion with the rest of the query. (OR NOT is also valid syntax, but would probably return more results than would be useful in most cases).
Ranking Advanced Search Results
Unlike with simple searches, Verity returns the results of an advanced query in no particular order, unless you specify ranking rules. An example of when you might not want to rank results is when you are doing a search of all web pages that contain links to your home page, and you want to display the results as a count only. For a count, only the number, and not the ordering of the results, is significant.
In most cases, though, you will want to filter the results of your search so that the most useful documents appear at the top of the list. To rank results, enter words or phrases in the Ranking field. Use spaces to separate multiple words or phrases. You can use the words that are a part of your query, or you can enter new words as an additional way to refine your search. For example, you could further narrow a search for COBOL AND programming by entering advanced and experienced in the Ranking field.
Ranking also limits your ability to view the search results to the top 200 documents. Because ranking naturally gives priority to documents that best meet the search criteria, 200 documents should be a sufficient number to provide you with the most useful information. For details about the factors that influence ranking, see How the Results are Ordered.
Searching within a specific time frame
You can confine your search to a particular time period by entering dates in the Start Date: and End Date: fields at the bottom of the advanced search screen. Verity Search finds matches for the specified time frame based on the time that the web page was last modified. Note that the software gets this information from the web server where the page exists; it may not always be accurate.
Enter the date in the format dd/mmm/yy where dd is the day of the month, mmm is an abbreviation for the name of the month, and yy is the last two digits of the year. Be sure to use the name of the month instead of a number; this eliminates ambiguity between date formats in different countries. For example:
09/jan/96
If you omit the year, the search assumes the date is in the current year. If you omit both the year and the month and specify only numbers for days, the search assumes the current month and year. For example, entering a Start date of 09/jan indicates that you want documents dated no earlier than January 9 of the current year. Entering a start date of 09 indicates that you want documents dated no earlier than the ninth day of the current month in the current year.
Notes
- Verity Search divides the search results into sets of listings for display. You can click on a number at the bottom of the page, or click on the Next or Previous jump, to display a new set of listings.
- If you are doing a simple search, or if you do an advanced search with ranking, Verity Search displays a maximum of 200 listings regardless of how many documents it found that matched the search criteria. For information about how Verity Search chooses the documents to display first, see How the Results are Ordered.
