You can search for any word or phrase on a Web site by typing the word or phrase into a
query form and clicking the button to execute the query (for example, the Execute Query
button on the sample query form). This section covers the following topics:
Searches produce a list of files that contain the word or phrase no matter where they
appear in the text. This list gives the rules for formulating queries:
- Consecutive words are treated as a phrase; they must appear in the same order within a
matching document.
- Queries are case-insensitive, so you can type your query in uppercase or lowercase.
- You can search for any word except for those in the exception list (for English, this
includes a, an, and, as, and other common words),
which are ignored during a search.
- Words in the exception list are treated as placeholders in phrase and proximity queries.
For example, if you searched for “Word for Windows”, the results could give you
“Word for Windows” and “Word and Windows”, because for is a
noise word and appears in the exception list.
- Punctuation marks such as the period (.), colon (:), semicolon (;), and comma (,) are
ignored during a search.
- To use specially treated characters such as &, |, ^, #, @, $, (, ), in a query,
enclose your query in quotation marks (“).
- To search for a word or phrase containing quotation marks, enclose the entire phrase in
quotation marks and then double the quotation marks around the word or words you want to
surround with quotes. For example, “World-Wide Web or
““Web””” searches for World-Wide Web or “Web”.
- You can insert Boolean operators (AND, OR,
and NOT) and the proximity operator (NEAR)
to specify additional search information.
- The wildcard character (*) can match words with a given prefix.
The query esc* matches the terms “ESC,” “escape,” and so on.
- Free-text queries can be specified without regard to
query syntax.
- Vector space queries can be specified.
- ActiveX™ (OLE) and file attribute property value
queries can be issued.
Boolean and proximity operators can create a more precise query.
| To Search For |
Example |
Results |
| Both terms in the same page |
access and basic
—Or—
access & basic |
Pages with both the words “access” and “basic” |
| Either term in a page |
cgi or isapi
—Or—
cgi | isapi |
Pages with the words “cgi” or “isapi” |
| The first term without the second term |
access and not basic
—Or—
access & ! basic |
Pages with the word “access” but not “basic” |
| Pages not matching a property value |
not @size = 100
—Or—
! @size = 100 |
Pages that are not 100 bytes |
| Both terms in the same page, close together |
excel near project
—Or—
excel ~ project |
Pages with the word “excel” near the word “project” |
Hints:
- You can add parentheses to nest expressions within a query. The expressions in
parentheses are evaluated before the rest of the query.
- Use double quotes (“) to indicate that a Boolean or NEAR operator
keyword should be ignored in your query. For example, “Abbott and Costello” will
match pages with the phrase, not pages that match the Boolean expression. In addition to
being an operator, the word and is a noise word in English.
- The NEAR operator is similar to the AND operator in
that NEAR returns a match if both words being searched for are in the
same page. However, the NEAR operator differs from AND
because the rank assigned by NEAR depends on the proximity of words. That
is, the rank of a page with the searched-for words closer together is greater than or
equal to the rank of a page where the words are farther apart. If the searched-for words
are more than 50 words apart, they are not considered near enough, and the page is
assigned a rank of zero.
- The NOT operator can be used only after an AND
operator in content queries; it can be used only to exclude pages that match a previous
content restriction. For property value queries, the NOT operator can be
used apart from the AND operator.
- The AND operator has a higher precedence than OR. For
example, the first three queries are equal, but the fourth is not:a AND b OR c
c OR a AND b
c OR (a AND b)
(c OR a) AND b
Note The symbols (&, |, !, ~) and the English
keywords AND, OR, NOT, and NEAR
work the same way in all languages supported by Index Server. Localized keywords are also
available when the browser locale is set to one of the following six languages:
| Language |
Keywords |
| German |
UND, ODER, NICHT, NAH |
| French |
ET, OU, SANS, PRES |
| Spanish |
Y, O, NO, CERCA |
| Dutch |
EN, OF, NIET, NABIJ |
| Swedish |
OCH, ELLER, INTE, NÄRA |
| Italian |
E, O, NO, VICINO |
Note The NEAR operator can be applied only to words
o
|