eLibrary - 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.
- By default, phrases will be searched for as though they were
all one statement. If you do not get the results you want, try
linking your search terms with the word AND if all words need
to be found in the same result. Link the search terms with OR
to find results that contain one or more of the words in your
list.
- Put quotation marks around keywords if you want to search
for the terms literally. For instance, if you type the following
query:
"Federal Energy Regulatory Commission"
The search engine will literally look for the complete phrase
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
- By default, a word search will do a search on the word as
typed and variations of the word such as bank, banking, and
banker. To search solely for the term bank, place the word in
double quotations, "bank."
- Use of the operator AND will return results containing all
of the search words specified.
Example: cats AND dogs
- Refine your queries with the NOT keyword
to exclude certain text from your search. For example, if you
want to find all instances of surfing but not surfing
the Net, write the following query: surfing AND NOT "the
Net"
- Add the OR keyword to select documents that include at least
one of the search terms specified, for example: Abbott OR Costello
This query finds all pages that mention Abbott or Costello or
both.
- To find words in close proximity, use one of the following
operators:
- Near/N
- Selects documents that contain two or more words within
N number of words of each other. N is optional.
Example: gathering<near/3>offshore will locate
the words gathering and offshore within three words of each
other.
- Paragraph
- Selects documents that include all of the search elements
you specify within a paragraph.
Example: "interstate commerce"<paragraph>"natural
gas"
- Sentence
- Selects documents that include all of the specified words
within a single sentence.
Example: "interstate commerce"<sentence>"natural gas"
- SOUNDEX
Expands the search to include the specified word and one or
more words that sound like, or whose letter pattern is similar
to, the word.
example: <SOUNDEX>sale
Returns documents that include words such as "sell",
"seal", "shell", and "scale."
Try also the operator TYPO which expands the search to include
the specified word plus words that are similar, e.g., <TYPO>mouse
will return documents including "house," "louse,"
and "moose."
- MANY
Considers the density of search words when calculating relevance-ranked
scores. This operator will rank shorter documents with multiple
occurrences of the search terms higher than larger documents
with the same number of occurrences. Because the relative density
of the occurrences is greater in the shorter document, the document
is considered to be more relevant to the query.
- ORDER
Specifies the order in which search elements must occur in the
document.
Example: <ORDER><PARAGRAPH>(cat,chases,dog) is more
likely to return documents that refer to cats chasing dogs,
than dogs chasing cats.
- Ranking
Assigns a relative importance, or weight, to search terms from
1 to 100 where 1 represents the lowest importance and 100 represents
the highest importance rating.
Example: [50]good,[80]excellent
Ranks documents containing the word excellent higher than those
documents containing the word good.
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