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* Check spelling - Make sure your search terms are spelled correctly.
The search engine will attempt to find words that sound similar your
search terms, but it is always best to spell the search terms
correctly.
* Use multiple words - Use multiple words when performing your search.
More words for a search will return more refined results than a search
from a single word.
* Use similar words - The more similar words you use in a search, the
more relevant results will be to the words that you are searching for.
* Use appropriate capitalization - Use capitalization when looking for
proper nouns such as the name of a person or place. Lowercase words
will match any words of any case.
* Use quotation marks around phrases - Use quotation marks to find
words that must appear adjacent to each other within a phrase. For
example, search for "Indira Gandhi" within quotes rather than just
Indira Gandhi.
* Use Boolean plus (+) or minus (-) operators - Precede a search term
or phrase with a plus (+) sign to indicate it must appear in a search
result. Precede a search term with a minus (-) sign to indicate an
undesirable search term or phrase that must not appear in a search
result. For example, searching for +dogs -collie will return results
that are about dogs, but not about collies.
* Use field searches - Field searches allow you to search for words
that appear in a specific part of a document such as the body text
(body:), title text (title:), alt text (alt:), meta description
(desc:), meta keywords (keys:) or URL (url:). The field name should
include the colon and precede the search word or phrase with no
spaces between them. For example, searching for title:presidents
will find pages with presidents in the title of the page.
* Use wildcards -
Wildcard searches can expand the number of matches for a particular request. The * character is used as the wildcard character.
For instance, searching for wh* will find the words what, why, when, whether, and any other word that starts with wh.
Searching for *her* will find the words here, whether, together, gathering, and any other word that contains her anywhere in the word.
Wildcards may be combined with the standard plus (+) and minus (-) modifiers, quotes for phrases, as well as the field search specifiers.
+wh* -se*ch will find all pages which have a word that starts with wh and which does not contain a word that starts with se and ends with ch.
"wh* are" will find the phrases where are, what are, why are, etc.
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