Search Options

Match ANY search word (Boolean OR)

Search for pages which contain AT LEAST ONE of the given search terms. The results will be sorted in order of the number of terms matched, and the determined relevancy score. Click the "match any search word" radio button to enable this search option.

Match ALL search word (Boolean AND)

Search for pages which contain ALL of the given search terms. The results will be sorted in order of the number of terms matched, and the determined relevancy score. Click the "match all search word" radio button to enable this search option.

Wildcard searches

You can use wildcard characters '*' and '?' in your search terms to search for multiple words and return larger set of results. An asterisk character ('*') in a search term represents any number of characters, while a question mark ('?') represents any single character.

This allows you to perform advanced searches such as "zoom*" which would return all pages containing words beginning with "zoom". Similarly, "z??m" would return all pages containing four letter words beginning with 'z' and ending with 'm'. Also, "*car*" would be a search for any words containing the word "car".

Exact phrase searches

An exact phrase search returns results where the phrase of words are found, in the same order that they are specified. For example, an exact phrase search for the words "green tea" would only return results where the phrase 'green tea' appears. It would not return pages where the words 'green' and 'tea' are found separately, or in a different order such as, 'tea green'.

To specify an exact phrase search term, you need to enclose the words that form the phrase using double quotation marks. You can also combine the use of exact phrase searches with normal search terms and wildcard search terms within a single search query (eg. "green tea" japan*). Note however, that wildcards within exact phrases (eg. "green te*") are not supported.

Note that the JavaScript option does not support exact phrase due to limitations in the language. So exact phrase is only supported with the ASP, PHP & CGI options.

Exclusion/negative searches

You can precede a search term with a hyphen character to exclude that search term from being included in your search results. For example, a search for "cat -dog" would return all pages containing the word "cat" but not the word "dog".