Tips for Searching

At its simplest, a query can be just a word or a phrase. But with the tips on this page, you can expand the focus of your query to give you more complete results.

• Look for words with the same prefix. For example, in your query form type drain* to find drain, drainage, draining, drains, and so on.

• Search for all forms of a word. For example, in the form type roof** to find roof, roofs, roofed, and roofing.

• Search with the keyword NEAR, rather than AND, for words close to each other. For example, both of these queries, ventilation and membrane and ventilation near membrane, look for the words ventilation and membrane on the same page. But with NEAR, the returned pages are ranked in order of proximity: The closer together the words are, the higher the rank of that page.

• Refine your queries with the AND NOT keywords to exclude certain text from your search. For example, if you want to find all instances of drain but not rainwater, write the following query:

  drain AND NOT rainwater

• Add the OR keyword to find all instances of either one word or another, for example:

  window OR door

  This query finds all pages that mention window or door or both.

• Put quotation marks around keywords if you want them to be taken literally. For instance, if you type the following query:
  
  "concrete near fibre"

  Index Server will literally look for the complete phrase concrete near fibre. But if you type the same query without the quotation marks:
  
  concrete near fibre

  The search facility finds all documents for the words concrete and fibre.