The Roundtable's search
engine operates on many of the same standards as other Internet
search engines. Following are instructions that will help
you get the most out of our site search:
Simple
Searches
Simple searches are queries that consist of a single word
or phrase.
Examples of Simple Searches:
| Search Term |
Finds Pages That Contain |
| meet |
The string meet and stemmed variations,
such as meets and meeting |
| "meet" |
The word meet |
| "S&L" |
The strings S&L, S & L, and S
L (always enclose words like S&L in double quotation
marks) |
| NOW |
The string NOW in upper case |
| repetitive stress injury |
The phrase repetitive stress injury |
| zoo* |
Words beginning with the string zoo |
Stemmed Words
When you submit a single word query, the search engine finds
documents that not only match the term you entered, but
also stemmed variations of the term -- in other words, a
search for the word "meet" will also return matches
for "meets", "met", "meeting",
etc.
| Tip |
You can always restrict
the search to the term itself by enclosing it in double
quotation marks.
Always use double quotation marks to enclose terms that
include unusual characters like the ampersand in S&L.
The search engine automatically expands the search to
include variations of the term with and without the
unusual character. |
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Searching
With Phrases
The search engine interprets any string of characters separated
by spaces as a phrase.
| Tip |
Be careful of phrase
searches that contain the following words because they
are operators in the search engine query language:
- And:
interpreted as the search engine query language AND
operator
- Or:
interpreted as the search engine query language OR
operator
- Not:
interpreted as the search engine query language NOT
modifier
You can still search for phrases containing
these words if you enclose them in double quotation
marks. |
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Combining
Search Terms
You can combine search terms using defined operators and modifiers
to refine your searches.
Examples of Combining Search Terms
| Search Term |
Finds Pages That Contain |
| crab OR lobster
OR shrimp |
ANY of the words crab, lobster,
or shrimp |
| bank AND loan AND
business |
ALL of the words bank, loan,
and business |
| bank, loan,
business |
ANY of the words bank, loan,
and business. The more instances of these words in a page,
the higher it appears in the results list. |
| bank NOT river |
The word bank but NOT the
word river |
| community <near>
service |
The word community close to
the word service |
| community <sentence>
service |
The word community in the
same sentence as the word service |
| community <paragraph>
service |
The word community in the
same paragraph as the word service |
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Using
Wildcards
You can use wildcard characters if you are not sure of the
spelling of your search term to expand your search:
- Asterisks (*) substitute for a string of
characters of any length
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Broadening
Searches
Sometimes a simple search produces a disappointing results
list. The query may not locate any matching documents, the
results list may be too short, or the documents in the results
list may not contain the information you are looking for.
In these instances, you may need to broaden your search in
order to retrieve a more promising results list.
OR Operator
If your simple search has not produced a useful results
list, you may have used the wrong term in your query. To
increase the chances of finding a document that matches
your query, you can use the OR operator with many synonymous
or closely related terms.
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Refining
Searches
In many instances, a search produces a results list that is
far too long to skim for the information you seek. You can
narrow down a search by combining search terms with the AND
operator. In effect, this operator imposes more stringent
conditions that documents must fulfill in order to appear
in the results list.
AND Operator
The AND operator finds pages that match all terms in the
query. If any of the search terms is not contained in a
document, that document does not appear in the results list.
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Excluding
Terms From Searches
If you have used a term with more than one meaning in a query,
you may generate a results list with documents that are not
relevant to your search even though they match the query term.
NOT Modifier
To exclude irrelevant documents from a search, you can use
the NOT modifier as part of the query.
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Proximity
Searching
You can focus a search more closely by using search engine
query language operators to retrieve documents that contain
the search terms in close proximity to each other: that is,
near each other, in the same sentence, or in the same paragraph.
The operators for proximity searching are NEAR, SENTENCE,
and PARAGRAPH.
NEAR Operator
The NEAR operator finds pages matching specified search
terms within close proximity to each other. The closer the
search terms are to each other, the higher the document
appears in the results list. SENTENCE and PARAGRAPH Operators
The SENTENCE
and PARAGRAPH operators are
used to specify a search within a sentence and paragraph.
The syntax for using these operators is similar.
| Note |
Most search engine query language
operators and modifiers must be enclosed within angle
brackets (<>) to distinguish them from the actual query
term. The words AND , OR , and NOT are always treated
as search engine query language operators unless they
are enclosed within double quotation marks. |
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CASE
Modifier
If you enter your search term in completely in lower case
or completely in upper case, the search engine looks for all
mixed case variations.
| Tip |
If you are looking for
pages about someone named Rose, enter the name with an
initial capital letter. To make the search more precise,
enclose the word in double quotation marks. When
you are searching for abbreviations or acronyms, case
is important. |
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Punctuation
Marks in Queries
Any character without special meaning in the search engine
query language can be entered anywhere in a query.
The following characters have special meaning
in the search engine query language.
| Character |
Description |
| , ( ) [ |
These characters end a text
token. |
| = > < ! |
These characters end a text
token because they signify the start of a field operator
(! is special: != ends a token). |
| * @ ` < { [ ! |
These characters signify the
start of a delimited token, which are terminated by the
end character associated with the start character. |
To search for a string that contains one of
these characters, precede the character with a backslash.
This is called "escaping" the special character.
For example, when searching for the e-mail address, "someone@rockinst.org"
it is necessary to escape the @ sign with a backslash as follows:
someone\@rockinst.org.
| Tip |
To search for a string that
contains a backslash character, enter two backslash characters.
|
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