Search Help How do I perform advanced searches (or what search tips can I provide to my users)?
Zoom provides a number of advanced search options to help you and your users find exactly what you're looking for on your website.
This page offers instructions on how to use these different search methods. You can also copy the following information as search tips that you provide to the visitors of your own website. You should note to only include instructions for search options that are enabled for your own Zoom Search Engine. Refer to the Users Guide on Configuring Zoom for more information.
Match ANY search word (Boolean OR)
Search for pages which contain AT LEAST ONE of the given search terms. The results will be sorted in order of the number of terms matched, and the determined relevancy score. Click the "match any search word" radio button to enable this search option.
Match ALL search word (Boolean AND)
Search for pages which contain ALL of the given search terms. The results will be sorted in order of the number of terms matched, and the determined relevancy score. Click the "match all search word" radio button to enable this search option.
Wildcard searches
You can use wildcard characters '*' and '?' in your search terms to search for multiple words and return larger set of results. An asterisk character ('*') in a search term represents any number of characters, while a question mark ('?') represents any single character.
This allows you to perform advanced searches such as "zoom*" which would return all pages containing words beginning with "zoom". Similarly, "z??m" would return all pages containing four letter words beginning with 'z' and ending with 'm'. Also, "*car*" would be a search for any words containing the word "car".
Exact phrase searches
An exact phrase search returns results where the phrase of words are found, in the same order that they are specified. For example, an exact phrase search for the words "green tea" would only return results where the phrase 'green tea' appears. It would not return pages where the words 'green' and 'tea' are found separately, or in a different order such as, 'tea green'.
To specify an exact phrase search term, you need to enclose the words that form the phrase using double quotation marks. You can also combine the use of exact phrase searches with normal search terms and wildcard search terms within a single search query (eg. "green tea" japan*). Note however, that wildcards within exact phrases (eg. "green te*") are not supported.
Exclusion/negative searches
You can precede a search term with a hyphen character to exclude that search term from being included in your search results. For example, a search for "cat -dog" would return all pages containing the word "cat" but not the word "dog".
Skip words
Note that some common words such as "the", "and", "or" may be deemed to be skip words and ignored by the search. This is configured by the web site administrator.
Category searches
You can restrict your searches to a specific category by choosing a defined category from the drop-down box. This is configured by the web site administrator.
