Search Help

Constructing a Search

Our search capability supports the following operators (see examples below):

+  A leading plus sign indicates that this word must be present in each record that is returned.

• Example: +apple  +juice
  Find records that contain both apple and juice.

-  A leading minus sign indicates that this word must not be present in any of the records that are returned.

• Example: +apple  –macintosh
  Find records that contain apple but not macintosh.

When neither + nor - is specified, the word is optional, but the records that contain it are rated higher in relevance (see more samples below).

• Example: apple banana
  Find records that contain either apple or banana.

*  Wildcards. Unlike the other operators, it should be appended to the word to be affected. Words match if they begin with the word preceding the * operator.

• Example: apple*
  Find records that contain words such as "apple", "apples", "applesauce", or "applet".

Exact phrase. A phrase that is enclosed within double quote (‘"’) characters matches only records that contain the phrase literally, as it was typed.

• Example: "some words"
  Find records that contain the exact phrase "some words".

> <  Greater than and less than. These two operators are used to change a word's contribution to the relevance value that is assigned to a record. The > operator increases the contribution and the < operator decreases it. See the examples following this list.

( )  Parentheses group words into sub expressions. Parenthesized groups can be nested.

~  A leading tilde acts as a negation operator, causing the word's contribution to the record's relevance to be negative. This is useful for marking "noise" words. A record containing such a word is rated lower than others, but is not excluded altogether, as it would be with the - operator.

Search Examples

The following examples demonstrate some search strings.

• apple banana
  Find records that contain at least one of the two words.
   
• +apple +juice
  Find records that contain both words.
   
• +apple macintosh
  Find records that contain the word "apple", but rank records higher if they also contain "macintosh".
   
• +apple -macintosh
  Find records that contain the word "apple" but not "macintosh".
   
• +apple ~macintosh
  Find records that contain the word "apple", but if the record also contains the word "macintosh", rate it lower than if record does not. This is "softer" than a search for '+apple -macintosh', for which the presence of "macintosh" causes the record not to be returned at all.
   
• +apple +(>turnover <strudel)
  Find records that contain the words "apple" and "turnover", or "apple" and "strudel" (in any order), but rank "apple turnover" higher than "apple strudel".
   
• apple*
  Find records that contain words such as "apple", "apples", "applesauce", or "applet".
   
• "some words"
  Find records that contain the exact phrase "some words" (for example, records that contain "some words of wisdom" but not "some noise words"). Note that the phrase must be within double quotes (‘"’).