To find information about a topic, simply type in a
few keywords. The more detailed your query, the more
relevant your results.
Our search engine also comes with some advanced
capabilities to help you find exactly what you're looking
for. These capabilities are best shown with a few
examples:
Prefacing a search term with a "special"
character can greatly help you to narrow your
searches....
Symbol
|
Translation
|
Example
|
Usage
|
+ / and
|
Require this term |
+internet |
Will only display listings that contain the
word "internet" |
-
|
Forbid this term |
-web or ...
+internet -web
|
Wil only display listings that DO NOT contain
the word "web" |
or
|
Prefer this term |
+internet or web |
This will find all listings containing
"internet", and will rank those that
also contain the word "web" a bit
higher. (since web is "preferred") |
"
"
|
Exactly match this phrase |
"Internet Help" |
This will find all listing that contain the
phrase "Internet Help". Note that using
the quote marks forces the engine into a
case-sensitive search. |
url:
|
Find all entries belonging to a given domain
or matching a file name |
url:www.mysite.com url:*asp
|
The top example will return all entries in
the www.mysite.com
domain. The lower example shows how you could
find every .asp page listed in the engine. |
mailto
|
Find all entries submitted by a person with
this email address |
mailto:fred@mysite.com
mailto:fred@mysi*
|
This is a convenience search, if you know who
posted a link (or want to see if a certain person
has posted any links, this is how you'd find
them. |
*
|
Match anything |
*net* inter*
|
The asterisk is a
powerful search tool, but has some limitations.
It cannot span words - that is, the query
"powerfu*earch" would not match the
first sentence of this paragraph - and it can
represent at most four letters or numbers. To
avoid overly broad searches, the asterisk can
only be used in words or phrases which have at
least three alpha-numeric characters. A search
for "th*" would be ignored.
|