Search

Tips for searching

• Word searching
• Phrase searching
• Truncation
• "Fuzzy" searching
• Boolean operators
• Other tips

At its simplest, a query can be just a word or a phrase. But with the tips on this page, you can change the focus of your query to give you more precise results. These tips will get you started with basic query language and acquaint you with the power of the search engine.

Word searching

Type one or more key words separated by the operator AND (see below for more information on the use of Boolean operators).

Sample search: computer AND printer will give a list of documents containing both computer and printer. The documents containing the most instances of the key words will appear at the top of the search results list.

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Phrase searching

Type key words together to ensure that the search results contain only perfect matches (the same words in the same order).

Sample search: meal rates will give results containing the phrase meal rates.

Put quotation marks around keywords if your query contains one of the Boolean operators and you want Index Server to take them literally.

Sample search: Privatization and quality services will give results containing the phrase Privatization and quality services

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Truncation

Replace the ending of a key word with an asterisk (*) as a wild card character to retrieve documents containing variant root word endings.

Example: financ* will retrieve documents containing the variations finance, finances, financial, finance's, etc.

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"Fuzzy" searching

Add two asterisks (**) as wild card characters to the end of a key word to search for all forms of that word.

Example: sink** will retrieve documents containing sink, sinking, sank, and sunk.

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Boolean operators

Are used to combine key words into one search.

• & (and) : used to include two or more concepts in a search. (i.e. & narrows a search.)

Example: risk & audit will retrieve documents containing both concepts.

• |(or) : used to search for synonyms, related words or different forms of a word. (i.e. | expands a search.)

Example: personnel | human resources will retrieve documents containing either or both of the concepts.

• &! (and not): used to exclude documents containing certain key words. (i.e. &! narrows a search.)

Example: apple &! computer will retrieve only documents about the fruit.

• ~ (near): used rather than & to search for words close to each other (proximity searching).

Example: both of these queries, system & manager and system ~ manager, look for the words system and manager on the same page.

But with ~, the returned pages are ranked in order of proximity. The closer together the words are in the document, the higher the document will be ranked and the closer the document will be to the top of the search results list.

Tip: Don't worry if you find a large number of results. In fact, use more than a couple of words when searching. Even though the number of results will be large, the most relevant content will always appear at the top of the result pages.

When in doubt, use lowercase text in your searches.
When you use lowercase text, the search service finds both upper and lowercase results. When you use upper case text, the search service finds only upper case.

Example: When you search for ottawa, you'll find Ottawa, ottawa, and OTTAWA in your result pages. However, when you search for Ottawa, you'll only see Ottawa in the result pages.

Date modified: 2005-11-14

Important Notices