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Home > Site Help > Advanced Search > Help with Searching
Help with Searching
To do a simple search of our site, simply enter a word or phrase (search
query) in the search box on any page and press the Search button.
No special characters or operators
are needed.
However, to conduct a more effective search, you need to understand how
the search engine interprets the search query. For example, by entering
the word region, the actual word region and all its stemmed
variations (such as regions and regional) are found. The
search results are ranked
for "importance," which means how close the matched word comes to the
originally input search criteria. In the example above, region
would rank higher than any of the stemmed variants.
What Is Assumed
The search engine makes certain assumptions that dictate how it interprets
your search query. In some cases, you can circumvent the assumptions, but
here is how the search engine decides what to include in the search results:
Case Sensitivity--Search ignores the case of your search query
if all the letters in the query are of the same case. You may force the
search engine to match the case of your query by mixing the case (upper
and lower case) of the letters in your query or by enclosing it in parentheses
or quotation marks.
Stemming--Search finds all documents that contain any stemmed
variant of the search word or phrase. The search engine looks at the meaning
of the word, not just its spelling. For example, if you want to search
on plan, the results would include documents that contain planning
and plans, but not those that contain plane or planet.
You may disable stemming by enclosing your search query in parentheses
or quotation marks.
Relevancy--Search considers how often the search word or phrase
appears in the found documents and ranks the results for frequency and
exactness. Relevancy is disabled when searching document
titles.
Phrases--Search considers words separated by spaces to be part
of a phrase. For example, Monterey otter is interpreted as a phrase
and both must be present and together to be found. Such a search would
not find documents containing sea otter or Monterey Bay.
You may force a search of the individual words in your search query by
inserting commas or the operator
OR between the words.
Sample Searches
| Sample Searches |
If you search for . . .
(all characters exactly as they appear below) |
The list of matching documents will include
all those . . . |
| steam |
Containing steam, Steam, STEAM, sTEAM,
etc. (i.e., any case). In addition, documents containing stemmed
variants (differing in tense or number) will also be found such as
steaming and steamer. However, a search for plan
would also yield plans, planned, and planning,
but not plane. |
| STEAM |
Same as above. |
| Steam |
Containing Steam or any of its containing stemmed variants (differing in tense or number) such as Steaming
and Steamer. Neither steam, STEAM nor sTEAM would be found.
However, a search for Plan would also yield Plans,
Planned, and Planning, but not Plane. |
| steam generator |
Containing the phrase steam generator (any case).
Stemmed variants would also be found (such as steam generators).
However, the list of documents will be sorted by relevancy,
so documents at the top of the list will be contain more matches closer
to the exact phrase than those lower in the list. |
| steam, generator |
Same as above. The comma is an operator
meaning <or>. Note that generator,
steam would achieve the same result, but with a different
sorted order favoring documents where generator occurs before
steam. |
| "steam generator" |
Containing the exact phrase steam generator (matching
case and without stemmed
variants). The pair of quotation marks turns off case insensitivity,
stemming, and proximity searching. |
| (steam generator) |
Same as above. The pair of parentheses functions the same as a pair
of quotation marks. |
| steam <AND> generator |
Containing both steam and generator (any case),
but in any order and not necessarily next to each other (<AND>
is an operator). Stemmed
variants of each term are also found. You may use AND,
<AND>, and, or <and>. |
| steam "and" generator |
Containing any one or more of the three terms steam, and,
and generator (any case). Stemmed
variants of are also found for steam and generator,
but not for and, since it is in quotation marks. |
| "steam and generator" |
Containing the exact phrase steam and generator (any case).
Stemming is turned
off. |
| steam not generator |
Containing steam but not generator (any case).
Stemmed variants
of steam are also found. |
| steam <NEAR/25> generator |
Containing both steam and generator, in either order,
within 25 words of each other (any case). Stemmed
variants of either term are also found. |
| title <CONTAINS>"steam generator" |
Containing an HTML
title that includes the exact phrase steam generator
(exact case and stemming
turned off). |
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