| General |
General information about the search engine. |
| Case Sensitive |
If a search engine is case sensitive then Capital letters (upper case) retrieve only upper case.
Most search engines are not case sensitive or only respond to initial capitals, as in proper names.
Note: It is always safe to key all lower case (no capitals), because lower case will always retrieve upper case.
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| Phrase searching |
Phrases searching retrieves only documents with the exact combinations of words (in the exact order) as keyed.
Most search engines allow phrase searching. Use it to narrow your results.
Note: It is important to consider nuances of the phrase that wouldn't normally of concern. For example the spaces in the phrase are as important as any other character.
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To require,
To exclude |
Many search engines allow you to use the symbols "+" and
"-".
Insert + immediately before a term (no space) to limit search to documents containing that term.
Insert - immediately before a term (no space) to exclude documents containing that term.
These symbols functions partially like basic Boolean logic. If + precedes more than one term, they
are required as with Boolean AND. If - is used, terms are excluded as with Boolean AND NOT.
Note: There's no space between the + or - and the term, but there is a space between words.
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| Boolean logic |
Boolean logic allows you to combine terms using "logical operators" such as "AND," "OR," "AND NOT" and sometimes "NEAR."
AND finds documents containing all of the specified words or phrases.
OR finds documents containing at least one of the specified words or phrases.
AND NOT excludes documents containing the specified words or phrases.
NEAR finds documents containing both specified words or phrases within (mostly) 10 words of each other.
Often parentheses may be used to sequence operations and group words. If you use different operators in one query, you must enclose the terms joined by OR with parentheses.
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| Stemming |
With stemming the word endings are automatically removed (lines becomes line) and searches are performed on
the "stem" + common endings (line or lines retrieves line, lines, line's, lines', lining, lined).
Not very common as a practice, and not always disclosed. Can usually be avoided by placing a term in " " (phrase searching).
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| Wildcards |
The use of wildcards or Truncation is applying a wildcard symbol (usually
*) after the first few letters of a word (the "stem"). It allows you to accept any variant spellings or word endings, from
the occurrence of the symbol forward. (E.g., femini* retrieves feminine, feminism, feminism, etc.)
Truncation tends to works best when the actual stem is longer and the stem itself is not the root to many common words.
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| Sub-searching |
Ability to search only within the results of a previous search. Enables you to refine search results.
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| Field searching |
Ability to limit a search by requiring word or phrase to appear in a specific field of documents (e.g., title, url, link).
Most often used to limit to the "Title" field in order to find documents primarily about one or more keywords.
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