Tips For Searching

You can search for any word or phrase on our web site by typing the word or phrase into the search box and clicking "Search". A query is simply a word or a phrase. The following tips will get you started with the basics of the query language and will help you expand your search to give you more complete results.

Basics

When you enter consecutive words into the search box they will be treated as a phrase.

Example: Viva Las Vegas will be treated as a phrase and therefore won't return pages unless the words appear in that order on the page. However there may be other words in between them.

If you want to search for pages that have several words and the order doesn't matter, use commas between them.

Example:Sugar, Coffee, Tea, Tonight will return any pages that have some of the words regardless of the order in which they appear.

Using quotes (" ") will return pages that include the exact phrase between the quotation marks.

Example:"I like cola" will only return pages that use the exact phrase I like cola, but not any pages that only have the word cola in them.

If you need to search for a word or phrase that is surrounded by quotes, you will need to put two sets of quotes around it.

Example:""Everybody I know seems to know me well."", said Robert will return pages that have the phrase: "Everybody I know seems to know me well.", said Robert

Common words such as For, Or, A, An, The ... as well as punctuation will be ignored by the search . If you want to use any special characters like @, #, $, %, &, * ... simply put them in quotes.

Boolean and Proximity Operators

Using the following keywords in combination with your query will help narrow the scope of your search.

AND- Returns all pages that includes both words or phrases.

Example: Grapes AND Oranges will return all the pages with both the word Grapes and Oranges, but won't return any pages that just have one or the other.

OR- Returns all pages that includes either words or phrases.

Example: Peanuts OR Cashews will return all the pages with either the word Peanuts or Cashews, This will also return any pages that include both words. Near- Works like AND becuase all the words must be on a page, but near will return words that are close to them.

Example: Big NEAR Dog will return pages with Big black dog, Big dog, dog is big ...

AND NOT- This allows you to exclude words from your search.

Example: Hamburgers AND NOT Cheeseburgers will return all the pages that include the word Hamburgers, but it won't return pages that include the word Cheeseburgers.

You can use Parenthesis ( ) to narrow your search even farther, Anything in parenthesis will be evaluated seperately.

Example: Van Halen AND (David Lee Roth AND NOT Sammy Hagar)
will return all the pages that include the words Van Halen and David Lee Roth but it won't return pages that have the word Sammy Hagar

Wildcards

Wildcards help you find pages that have words similar to the ones that you are looking for. Using a wildcard returns pages that have words or phrases begining with the same letters or you can search for other forms of a word.

To search for all pages including words that begin with the letters "Mat" simply enter Mat* into the search box.

Example: Mat* will return pages with words like Matt, Matthew, Matte, Matinee ...

To search for other forms of a word, such as the past tense form, enter the word followed by two asterisks. (**)

Example: Sink** will return pages with words like Sink, Sinking, Sank, Sunk ...