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Tips for Searching

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

Look for words with the same prefix. For example, in your query form type key* to find key, keying, keyhole, keyboard, and so on.

Search for all forms of a word. For example, in the form type sink** to find sink, sinking, sank, and sunk.

Search with the keyword NEAR, rather than AND, for words close to each other. For example, both of these queries, system and manager and system near manager, look for the words system and manager on the same page. But with NEAR, the returned pages are ranked in order of proximity: The closer together the words are, the higher the rank of that page.

Refine your queries 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 query: 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 query finds all pages that mention Abbott or Costello or both.

Put quotation marks around keywords if you want the search engine to take them literally. For instance, if you type the following query:

"system near manager"

the search engine will literally look for the complete phrase system near manager. But if you type the same query without the quotation marks:

system near manager

the search engine searches all documents for the words system and manager.

Use Free Text Queries if you want to enter queries using natural language. The search engine will examine your query, extract nouns and noun phrases and construct a query for you. With free text queries you can enter any text you want, from a proper question, to a string of words and phrases, without worrying about the query language. For example, if you type in the following query:

"How do I use the TRV tapes?"
the search engine will create a query for you automatically and begin the search. 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.

Hints:

Common terms are labeled noise words in the search engine and are not evaluated in a search. Common words include but are not limited to, and, or, but, not, to, with etc.. Noise words that are also Boolean operators will be used as such if in the proper context.
You can add parentheses to nest expressions within a query. The expressions in parentheses are evaluated before the rest of the query.
Use double quotes (“) to indicate that a Boolean or NEAR operator keyword should be ignored in your query. For example, “Abbott and Costello” will match pages with the phrase, not pages that match the Boolean expression. In addition to being an operator, the word and is a noise word in English.
The NEAR operator is similar to the AND operator in that NEAR returns a match if both words being searched for are in the same page. However, the NEAR operator differs from AND because the rank assigned by NEAR depends on the proximity of words. That is, the rank of a page with the searched-for words closer together is greater than or equal to the rank of a page where the words are farther apart. If the searched-for words are more than 50 words apart, they are not considered near enough, and the page is assigned a rank of zero.
The NOT operator can be used only after an AND operator in content queries; it can be used only to exclude pages that match a previous content restriction.
The AND operator has a higher precedence than OR. For example, the first three queries are equal, but the fourth is not:
a AND b OR c
c OR a AND b
c OR (a AND b)
(c OR a) AND b

Note The symbols (&, |, !, ~) and the keywords AND, OR, NOT, and NEAR are interchangeable with the search engine.