To find information about a topic, simply type in a few keywords.
The more detailed your query, the more relevant your results.
Our search engine also comes with some advanced capabilities
to help you find exactly what you're looking for. These capabilities
are best shown with a few examples:
Prefacing a search term with a "special" character
can greatly help you to narrow your searches....
| Symbol |
Translation |
Example |
Usage |
| + / and |
Require this term |
+internet |
Will only display listings that contain the word "internet" |
| - |
Forbid this term |
-web or ...
+internet -web |
Will only display listings that DO NOT contain the word
"web" |
| or |
Prefer this term |
+internet or web |
This will find all listings containing "internet",
and will rank those that also contain the word "web"
a bit higher. (since web is "preferred") |
| " " |
Exactly match this phrase |
"Internet Help" |
This will find all listing that contain the phrase "Internet
Help". Note that using the quote marks forces the engine
into a case-sensitive search. |
| url: |
Find all entries belonging to a given domain or matching
a file name |
url:www.mysite.com url:*asp |
The top example will return all entries in the www.mysite.com
domain. The lower example shows how you could find every
.asp page listed in the engine. |
| mailto |
Find all entries submitted by a person with this email
address |
mailto:fred@mysite.com
mailto:fred@mysi* |
This is a convenience search, if you know who posted a
link (or want to see if a certain person has posted any
links, this is how you'd find them. |
| * |
Match anything |
inter*
|
You can use the asterisk as a "wildcard"
to match parts of a word. In our example, the search would
return any listing with any word starting with "inter".
The asterisk does have one limitation: it cannot span
words - that is, the query "mat*arts" would
not match the first sentence of this description - and
it can represent at most four letters or numbers. To avoid
overly broad searches, the asterisk can only be used in
words or phrases which have at least three characters,
so a search for "th*" or "an*" would
be ignored. |