Tips for Searching

At its simplest, a search can be just a word or a phrase. But with the tips on this page, you can expand the focus of your search to give you more complete results. These tips will get you started with basic search language.

• Search the site by typing a word and an asterisk and enclosing the word in quotes. For example, in your search form type "key*" to find key, keying, keyhole, keyboard, and so on.
• Search with the keyword NEAR(), rather than AND, for words close to each other. For example, both of these searches, system and manager and system near() manager, look for the words system and manager on the same page. But with NEAR(), the only pages returned are those where the two words are within 50 words of each other. (You can also use the tilde ~ instead of NEAR()).
• Refine your searches with the AND NOT keywords to exclude certain text from your search. For example, if you want to find all instances of surfing but not the Net, write the following search:
  
  surfing AND NOT the Net
  
  
• Add the OR keyword to find all instances of either one word or another, for example:
  
  Abbott OR Costello
  This search finds all pages that mention Abbott or Costello or both.
  
  
• Put quotation marks around keywords if you want them to be taken literally. For instance, if you type the following search:
  
  "system and manager"
The search will literally look for the phrase system and manager. But if you type the same search without the quotation marks: system and manager
all documents are searched for the words system and manager.
• To search for documents containing several words, you should always use keywords such as AND, OR, NOT etc. Otherwise it will be assumed that the words entered are a phrase and automatically put quotes around them.
• Ticking the 'Use free text query' you can enter any text you want, from a proper question, to a number of words and phrases, without worrying about the query language. For example, if you type in one of the following queries: "wildlife conservation countryside" or "How do I become a conservation volunteer?"
similar results will be returned. Use Free Text Queries if you want to enter queries using natural language. Your query will be examined, nouns and noun phrases will be extracted and a query will constructed for you. The query is automatically created for you and the search begun. Note that when you're using free text queries, the regular query language features are disabled and keywords such as AND, OR, and NEAR are interpreted as normal words.