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.

• Look for words with the same prefix. For example, in your query form type key* to find key, keying, keyhole, keyboard, and so on.

• Search with the keyword NEAR, rather than AND, for words close to each other. For example, both of these queries, system and manager and system near manager, look for the words system and manager on the same page. But with NEAR, the returned pages are ranked in order of proximity: The closer together the words are, the higher the rank of that page.

• Refine your queries with the AND NOT keywords to exclude certain text from your search. For example, if you want to find all instances of surfing but not the Net, write the following query:

  surfing AND NOT the Net

• Add the OR keyword to find all instances of either one word or another, for example:

  Abbott OR Costello

  This query finds all pages that mention Abbott or Costello or both.

• For multiple word searches use the AND keyword. For example, to search for documents that contain the words bacterial tomato, type bacterial and tomato.