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Web search engines conduct searches in a variety of ways. Most of
them use symbols
to represent Boolean operators. Boolean operators are the magic words and
or not, that are used to define a set when doing web searches.
| + is the AND operator |
The Boolean operator and as in A and B
defines a set of items that occur in both A and B. |
| - is the NOT operator |
The Boolean operator not as in A not B
defines a set of items that occur in A but not B. |
| Or is assumed |
The Boolean operator or as in A or B defines
a big set of items that occur in either A or B. |
| "" quote marks |
The quote marks are used to define a group of words as a
single idea. |
| * the asterisk |
The asterisk is used as a wild card. |
Rules and Examples of Search Syntax
 | The preferred way to link words into a phrase is to use quotes. A phrase
is any string of adjacent words. For example: "petite galerie" |
| Lower-case searches will find matches of capitalized words also. For
example, paris will find matches for paris, Paris,
and PARIS. |
| Capital letters in a search will force an exact case match on the entire
word. For example, submitting a query for paRIS will search
for matches of paRIS. (Don't be surprised if there are
none.:-) |
| Matches may be required or prohibited. Precede a required word or phrase
with + and a prohibited one with -. For example, the following query +noir
+film -"pinot noir" finds documents containing film
and noir, but not containing pinot noir. |
| Punctuation glues words into a phrase, just as quotes do. Punctuation is
treated as white space. For example, antique;pump;organ is
equivalent to "antique pump organ" (that is, three
words enclosed in quotes). |
| Use the asterisk (*) when you are looking for variations of a word. For
example, quilt* matches pages that contain at least one word
such as quilt, quilts, quilting, quilted, quilter, etc. Hint: the
asterisk (*) is also useful for searching for variant spellings. For
example, alumi*m will find matches for both aluminum
and the British English aluminium. |
| To find documents most relevant to what you need, construct your query as
precisely as you can. Alta Vista ranks the documents found so that the ones
matching the most words and phrases in the query are listed first. Even so,
you might not find exactly what you want at the head of the list if your
search is too general.
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These tips were developed by Ken Fiori, Santa Rosa
Junior College.
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