SEARCH TIPS
By default the search engine tries to locate pages which have exact matches for all of the words entered in your search query.
If that fails, it then tries to locate pages which contain any words in your search query.
If that happens a short message is displayed at the top of the search results indicating this has been done.
In addition, there are several ways to modify the default search behavior.
phrase search
The search engine supports three types of phrase search.
To match an exact phrase, use quotes around the phrase
Example: "free search engine"
To match a near (within a couple of words) phrase, use square brackets [around the words]
Example: [free search engine]
To match a far (within several words) phrase, use braces { around the words }
Example: {free search engine}
+ and - qualifiers
If you prepend a word with + that word is required to be on the page.
If you prepend a word with - that word is required to not be on the page.
Example: +always -never
* wildcard
If a query word ends with a * all words on a page which start the same way as that query word will match.
Example: gift*
? wildcard
If a query word contains a ? any character will match that position.
Example: b?g
boolean search
You can use the following boolean operators in your search:
AND, OR, NOT. These operators MUST be in capital letters.
Example: (contact AND us) OR (about AND us)
All of these techniques can be combined: +alway* -ne??r*
Search Tips (Advanced Search)
The advanced search box includes four text fields and a number of search controls.
To perform a search, enter your search terms in the appropriate text fields, select your desired search controls, and press "search".
The text fields include all, phrase, any and none. Enter your query in one or more of these fields. A page must match all fields to be included in the result.
all - pages which include all of the terms entered in this field are returned
phrase - pages which include these terms together in this order are returned
any - pages which include any of these terms are returned
none - pages which include other selected terms, but none of these terms are returned. Note that this field cannot be used alone, but must be combined with terms in the all, phrase, or any, fields.
Use the search controls to modify the default search behavior:
number of results
The search engine can show from 1 to 25 results per page. Use this dropdown to select the number of results you would like to see on each page.
description text
When a search is performed a snippet of text is shown from each page which matches the search. Use this dropdown to control how much text you would like to see with each search result.
word stemming
Word stemming is used to match multiple forms of a word to a single query term. For example, when stemming is on, the word "use" would also match "used" and "using", and the word "run" would match "runs" and "running".
Word stemming is language dependent and is not available for all languages. Use the dropdown to select the language you are searching in.
If you want only exact matches select "none" from the dropdown to turn word stemming off.
Note: when matching case or accent sensitive query terms, turn stemming off. If word stemming is combined with case sensitivity or accent sensitivity, only the unstemmed portion of the word will be matched sensitively.
accent sensitive
By default accents in words are ignored for word matching. For example "März" would be the same "Marz". If accent sensitivity is on the words "März" and "Marz" will be handled as different words.
case sensitive
By default upper and lower case characters in words are considered the same for word matching. For example "march" would be the same "March". If case sensitivity is on the words "march" and "March" will be handled as different words.