Check spelling - Make sure your search
terms are spelled correctly. The search engine will attempt to find words
that sound similar your search terms, but it is always best to spell the search
terms correctly.
Use multiple words - Use multiple words
when performing your search. More words for a search will return more refined
results than a search from a single word.
Use similar words - The more similar
words you use in a search, the more relevant results will be to the words
that you are searching for.
Use appropriate capitalization - Use
capitalization when looking for proper nouns such as the name of a person
or place. Lowercase words will match any words of any case.
Use quotation marks around phrases -
Use quotation marks to find words that must appear adjacent to each other
within a phrase. For example, search for "Indira Gandhi" within
quotes rather than just Indira Gandhi.
Use Boolean plus (+) or minus (-) operators
- Precede a search term or phrase with a plus (+) sign to indicate it must
appear in a search result. Precede a search term with a minus (-) sign to
indicate an undesirable search term or phrase that must not appear in a search
result. For example, searching for +dogs -collie will return results that
are about dogs, but not about collies.
Use field searches - Field searches
allow you to search for words that appear in a specific part of a document
such as the body text (body:), title text (title:), alt text (alt:), meta
description (desc:), meta keywords (keys:) or URL (url:). The field name should
include the colon and precede the search word or phrase with no spaces between
them. For example, searching for title:presidents will find pages with presidents
in the title of the page.
E-mail comments and suggestions to Ed Stewart,
stargazer@skymtn.com.
This page was last updated on October 26, 2003.
