Search tipsSearch methodsYou can search for one or several words at the same time. You can also enter a whole sentence:State visit to India and Pakistan The search engine evaluates the results statistically (according to relevance) and lists them in the corresponding order. Words like "on" and "to" have a very low rating. OR operator when entering several keywordsWIf you enter several terms (separated only by a space between each word) each individual word is searched for, independently of the others (!). A logical OR operator exists between the individual words, i.e. at least one of the words is contained in the hit document, although sometimes the document contains several or all of the words at the same time:State visit India Pakistan This search finds everything on state visits, though these do not necessary have to be state visits to India. In addition, EVERYTHING containing (just) 'Pakistan' or even just 'India' is displayed! AND operator when entering several keywordsUse the + (plus) symbol (logical AND operator) before each word, if EACH of the words entered should be included in the hit document:+State visit +India +Pakistan However, the search may display a document in which "India" is only mentioned by chance (the state visit was actually to France!) A keyword should NOT be includedUse the - (minus) symbol (logical NOT operator) before a word, if the word should ON NO ACCOUNT be included:+State visit +India -Pakistan The search will find everything on the first 2 terms, but (unfortunately) nothing on "Pakistan". Finding an EXACT match for a search expression (part of a sentence)If you place a series of words (or a sentence) in inverted commas "..." the search will only find documents which contain the whole expression EXACTLY and ONLY in this order: "State visit India Pakistan" finds nothing (because it was not a state visit!) Specifically searching only parts of documentsThe following special operators allow you to specifically search for a term only in certain PARTS of online documents:
title: The title of the HTML document Normally (without these operators) the whole document is searched fully. Detailed searchUse the "Detailed search" to select many of these special search options from easy-to-use pulldown menus!Displaying and sorting hitsAs regards formatting and sorting the hit list, you can decide how many hits are displayed on each page and whether the results should be sorted according to relevance, date or alphabetical order.Searching through the resultsYou can narrow down (refine) a search result further by searching for new keywords in the hit list. |
