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MC Search Engine collects documents from the Microgetics site. A
specialized collector crawls for data of each specific source type. MC Search
creates one or more indixes from the information in the collected documents.
When you query an index of the collected information, MC Search Engine provides
the location of the desired document or database.
You enter one or more search words on the search page and select the type of
search you want to perform. MC Search Engine provides you with a list of
HTML pages or other files that contain the word(s) you entered. The most
relevant content appears at the top of your results.
Doing a search is quite simple:
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Type one or more search words in the search box.
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Press the Search button to start your search.
Even though the number of results may be large, the most relevant content
always appears at the top of the result pages. In fact, use more than a
couple of words when searching if you can; this will help narrow your search.
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What is an index?
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The MC Search Engine index is a large,
growing, organized collection of Web pages and other kinds of documents.
Depending on how the search administrator configures the software that
retrieves Web pages and files from your portal and the Internet, you have
access to a large number of interesting and useful documents.
When you use MC Search Engine, you search the entire index using keywords or
phrases.
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What is a word? |
A word is a combination of letters and
numbers. You can separate words using spaces or tabs. |
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What is a phrase? |
You can link words and numbers together
into phrases if you want specific words or numbers to appear together in your
result pages. If you want to find an exact phrase, place double
quotation marks ("phrase words") around the phrase when you enter
words in the search box.
For example, to find information about the first moon landing, type "Apollo
11 mission" in the search box.
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use punctuation or special characters such as dashes, underscore lines, commas,
slashes, or dots to create phrases.
For example, try searching for 1-800-555-1212 instead of 1 800 555 1212.
The dashes link the numbers together as a phrase.
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Viewing your search results in your native language: |
Using the Language pull-down menu in the
search box, you can find all the documents about a given topic that were
written in a specific language. This type of search excludes documents in other
languages so that you can make your search even more exact. For example, if you
select the Italian pull-down option when searching for Roma, the
results see result pages including the word Roma written on
Italian Web pages.
You can also click on a language link at the bottom of the query page to
display the query page, results page, and on-line help in that language.
You can still choose to search for items from other languages using the
pulldown. |
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When in doubt, use lowercase text in your searches. |
When you enter a search term in lowercase
text, MC Search Engine finds both upper and lowercase results. When you enter a
search term in uppercase text, only uppercase results are returned. For example,
when you search for paris, you'll find Paris, paris, and PARIS
in your result pages. However, when you search for Paris, you'll only
see Paris
in the result pages.
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Including or excluding words: |
To make sure that a specific word is
always included in your search topic, place the plus (+)
symbol before that word in the search box. To make sure that a specific word is
always excluded from your search topic, place a minus (-) sign before that word
in the search box. For example, to find recipes for cookies with oatmeal but
without raisins, enter recipe cookie +oatmeal -raisin.
For best results, do not use the + and -
operators.
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Expand your search using wildcards (*): |
By typing an * at the end of a
keyword, you can search for the word with multiple endings.
For example: to find wish, wishes, wishful, and wishbone, enter wish*
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When should you use advanced search?
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Advanced search is for very specific
searches should you need to find documents within a certain range of dates, or
if you have to do some complex Boolean searches. Words
and phrases work the same in both simple and advanced search. The include (+)
or exclude (-) features are not available in advanced
search. Instead, you can use the more powerful Boolean commands to
customize your search. Also, you can display the results without having
MC Search Engine rank the material for you.
Click here for more advanced search tips.
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This section further explains the two search methods available (simple
and advanced), basic search syntax,
keywords, and other features that you can use to get the most out of your
search. Both the simple and advanced search interfaces are equally
powerful and flexible, and there is not that much difference in how difficult
they are to use. Each has specific attributes that may be more suited to
your search requirements:
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Simple search |
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Allows you to search for documents containing any, all, or a phrase comprised
of the search terms you enter
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Ranks results automatically
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Uses the + and - symbols as simple operators
to require search terms to be present or excluded, respectively.
For details, see Simple searches
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Advanced search |
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Requires a more precise, logical syntax that gives more control over the
results of a search.
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Can optionally enter ranking rules
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Can use Boolean operators
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Can search using a date range
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Can provide a count of the number of documents that meet your search criteria
For details, see Advanced searches.
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Simple searches use general MC Search syntax rules regarding
phrasing, case sensitivity, and use of the asterisk (*) as a wildcard
character. You can also select one of three options for your search:
To make your search more effective, use the following tips:
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To increase the likelihood that the most relevant documents will appear at the
top of the list, enter several synonyms for the topic for which you are
searching. .
Example: Querying for shoes leather footwear instead of just one
of those words increases the chance of finding documents about leather shoes.
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Use quotation marks to group several words into a phrase.
Example: bicycle "for sale" finds documents that contain
either the phrase for sale or the word bicycle.
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Use the wildcard notation (*) at the end of a word stem to find related words.
Example: quilt* finds the words quilts, quilter, quilting,
and quilted.
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Use the + and - operators.
Example: noir +film -"pinot noir"
finds documents containing both noir and film but not the phrase pinot
noir.
Advanced searches use the same general MC Search syntax rules
as simple searches, but they offer more options for refining a search based on
operators and expressions. With the advanced search feature, you have more
control over the results of your search, and you also have to be more precise
in order to get the results that you want.
You can group words into phrases as you would do for a simple search. However,
you must use a Boolean operator to combine several words or phrases in the same
search. The advanced search operators are as follows:
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Operator |
Symbol Equivalent |
Action |
| AND |
& |
Finds only documents containing all of the specified
words or phrases. |
| OR |
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Finds documents containing at least one of the
specified words or phrases. |
| NOT |
! |
Excludes documents containing the specified word or
phrase. |
| NEAR |
~ |
Finds documents containing both specified words or
phrases within 10 words of each other. |
You can enter an operator in all uppercase or all lowercase. Using uppercase is
a convenient way to distinguish the operators from words that are part of your
search. You can also enter a symbol in place of an operator, although
using symbols makes a query more cryptic and less conversational.
Notes
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If you need to use a word such as OR or NEAR in a query, enclose the word in
double quotes to distinguish it from the operator of the same name. For
example, to look for the city of Portland and either Oregon
or its United States postal service abbreviation, OR, enter Portland AND (Oregon
OR "OR") .
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MC Search Engine follows a default order of precedence (NEAR, NOT, AND, OR)
when interpreting a query that has several operators. For complex queries,
however, use parentheses to indicate the order in which you want the search
engine to interpret the operators.
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The simple search operators (+ and -) are
interpreted as punctuation, not logical operators, in advanced queries.
Use these operators in simple searches only.
The following examples illustrate how to use operators and parentheses to
construct an advanced search query.
- (apple OR pear) AND (tart OR pie)
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This query requests that either of the words apple or pear appear
in the same document with either of the words tart or pie.
- Krafft NEAR Ehricke
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The operator NEAR ensures that both Krafft and Ehricke are within
ten words of each other in any document resulting from the search. The NEAR
operator is often useful in searching for names because of the possible
different forms that a name can take, such as Krafft Ehricke; Ehricke,
Krafft; and Krafft A. Ehricke.
- vegetable AND (NOT broccoli)
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The operators AND NOT ensure that documents found contain the word vegetable
but not the word broccoli.
When NOT appears in a position other than the
beginning of a query, use AND to connect the NOT operator with the rest of the
query. The syntax vegetable NOT broccoli (without the AND) returns
a syntax error. vegetable OR NOT broccoli is valid
syntax, but would probably return more results than would be useful in most
cases.
Both the simple and advanced search functions use the same syntax rules
regarding phrasing, case sensitivity, and finding related words.
MC Search Engine defines a word as any string of letters and digits that is
separated by either
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white space, such as spaces, tabs, line ends, or the start or end of a
document, or
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special characters and punctuation, such as %, $, /, #, and _
For example, MC Search Intranet interprets and indexes HAL5000, 60258, www,
http, and EasierSaidThanDone all as single words, because they are continuous
strings of characters, surrounded by characters that are neither letters nor
digits. The software indexes all words that it finds in a web document,
regardless of whether the word exists in a dictionary or is spelled correctly.
Searching for Phrases
You can find phrases, or groups of related words that appear next to each other.
To indicate a phrase in a search query, enclose the words with double quotes.
Phrasing ensures that MC Search Engine finds the words together, instead
of looking for separate instances of each word individually. MC Search Engine
returns instances of personnel alone and policies
alone, as well as any instances where the two words happen to appear together
(including policies personnel).
Punctuation
MC Search Engine ignores punctuation except to interpret it as a separator for
words. Placing punctuation or special characters between each word, with no
spaces between the characters and the words, is also a way to indicate a
phrase. As an example of when punctuation might be useful in indicating a
phrase, consider searching for a telephone number. Entering
1-800-555-1212
is easier than entering "1 800 555 1212", which is an equally
acceptable syntax, but is less natural. Hyphenated words, such as CD-ROM, also
automatically form a phrase because of the hyphen.
Normally, however, using double quotes to indicate a phrase is recommended over
the use of punctuation between words, because some special characters have
additional meaning:
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In both simple and advanced searches, you can use the asterisk (*) as a
wildcard indicating that you want to find all words containing a match for the
specified pattern of letters.
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The + and - characters are operators that help to filter the results of a
simple search.
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The &, |, ~, and ! characters are operators that help to filter the results of
an advanced search.
Case sensitivity of a search is based on the case in which you enter your query.
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A query in all lowercase letters results in a case-insensitive search.
For example, if you enter turkey in the query field, MC Search Engine
finds all occurrences of the word turkey, including those spelled TUrkey,
TURKEY, turkey, and so forth.
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If your query contains any uppercase letters, the search is case-sensitive.
For example, if you enter Turkey in the query field, MC Search Engine
finds all occurrences of Turkey with initial capitalization only. It does not
return documents containing the words TURKEY or turkey.
You can use the asterisk wildcard notation ( * ) to search for a group of words
that contain the same pattern. This is convenient for finding derivatives and
spelling variants of the same word.
For example, to look for the word sing and any derivatives, such as
singer, singers, and singing, enter sing* in the query field. Searching
for cantalo* will produce matches for cantaloup, cantaloupe, cantalope,
and their plurals.
Notes
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A wildcard search can produce words that match the pattern of your query but
are unrelated to what you are looking for. It is sometimes possible to change
the placement of the wildcard character to reduce the number of irrelevant
results. For example, if you want to find matches for both color and colour, a
query of the form col*r could also find matches for the words collector
and collider. Submitting a query for colo*r is more precise, and results
in matches for both color and colour.
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To limit extraneous searching, you must specify at least three letters in front
of the asterisk, for example, app*. Also, the wildcard matches only
alphabetic characters (not numeric or punctuation characters), and interchanges
with a maximum of five letters. If you add another asterisk (app**), the
wildcard matches an unlimited number of trailing characters. However, it only
returns up to fifty words.
For example: "app**" might expand to "appliances", "application",
"appropriate", and so forth.
For example: "app**" might expand to "appliances",
"application", "appropriate", and so forth.
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If your search notation results in matches that are too numerous to be
meaningful, MC Search Engine displays a message similar to the following:
Ignored inte*: 4292323
The example message indicates that there are more than four million instances in
the index of words starting with "inte". Consequently, MC Search
Engine does not return any results, because the query is not specific enough to
be useful.
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