Use More Words
Can't have too many, try it.
Use + to Require Words
Put a plus sign (+) in front of a search word if you want ALL of the search hits to contain the word.
Example search: Santas +Anarchy.
Use - to Exclude Words
Put a minus sign (-) in front of a search word to make sure NONE of the documents returned contain the word.
Example search: Santas -naughty -drunks.
Use AND, OR, NOT, AND NOT, ( )
You can use all the Boolean operators and syntax. You can use the AND, OR, NOT, and AND NOT operators, and parentheses ( ) for grouping
. Example search: santas AND (drunks OR stoners).
Ugh, I'm tired of editing this file, so from here on in it's the canned instructions that come with the search engine. I think I got most of the really irritating stuff. -Hugh Mann, 10/5/99
Using a Plus Sign (+) to Require Words
What it does:
Excite for Web Servers will make sure that ALL of the documents it finds include
the word(s) you specify as being required.
How to use it:
In your search text, put a plus sign (+) in front of words that
must be in documents that Excite for Web Servers finds. Do not put a space between
the plus sign (+) and the word. For example, to find documents
about hockey, but only those with the term NHL in them you could
enter:
hockey +NHL
What's different about it:
Without the plus sign (+), Excite for Web Servers looks for documents about any
of the words in your search text. Excite for Web Servers will rank documents
that have all of the words higher, but will also list documents
that have only some of your search words as well as documents
that may have none of your search words, but that appear to be
conceptually related.
The downside:
You may miss related documents that don't have the words you specify
as required. For example, the search "hockey +NHL"
would not include documents that have the words National Hockey
League, but not NHL.
Using a Minus Sign (-) to Exclude Words
What it does:
Excite for Web Servers will make sure that NONE of the documents it finds contain
any word(s) you specify to exclude.
How to do it:
In your search text, put a minus sign (-) in front of words that
must not be in documents that Excite for Web Servers finds. Do not put any space
between the minus sign (-) and the word. For example, if you want
to find documents about zeppelin aircraft but not the rock band
Led Zeppelin, you could enter: Zeppelin -Led
What's different about it:
Without the minus sign (-), Excite for Web Servers looks for documents that are
conceptually-related to all the search words you provide, rather
than looking for items to exclude from the results.
The downside:
It's easy to exclude too much. For example, if you were looking
for information on greyhound dogs and not the bus company, the
search "greyhound -bus" would exclude a document that
was all about greyhounds, but that had the sentence "the
greyhound trainers arrived by bus."
Boolean Operators: AND, OR, NOT and ()
What they do/How to use them:
AND - Documents found must contain all words joined by the AND
operator. Note that this is equivalent to putting a plus sign
(+) in front of the word. For example, to find documents that
have all of the words wizard, oz and movie, you could enter: wizard
AND oz AND movie
OR - Documents found must contain at least one of the words joined by OR. For example, to find documents that have either the words cat or kitten you could enter: cat OR kitten
AND NOT - Documents found cannot contain the word after the term AND NOT. Note that this is equivalent to putting a minus sign (-) in front of the word. For example, to find documents that have the word pets, but not the word dogs, you could enter: pets AND NOT dogs
( ) - Parentheses are used to group portions of Boolean queries together. For example, to find documents that have the word fruit, and either the word banana or the word apple in them, you could enter: fruit AND (banana OR apple)
What's different about it:
Allows for excluding and requiring words, and complex combinations
of words.
The downside:
It's often difficult to specify exactly what you want to include
or exclude. You can also get unexpected results if you are not
careful about your use of operators and parentheses. For example,
the search bananas OR apples AND oranges is the same as the search
bananas OR (apples AND oranges). Both queries will find documents
that contain both apples and oranges, together with documents
that contain the word bananas. However, the query (bananas OR
apples) AND oranges is not the same. It will find documents containing
the word oranges and, in the same document, either bananas or
apples. Be careful out there!