|
Search Query
|
Description
|
| cat
dog |
Search
results have the word cat and the word dog in
them. Some preference is given to results that also have
the phrase cat dog. |
| cat .. dog |
Use two
periods to separate concepts. Like above, but no weight
is given to the phrase cat dog. |
| mp3 "take
five" |
Search
results have the word mp3 and the phrase take five in
them. |
| "john
smith" -"bob dole" |
Search
results have the phrase john smith but NOT the phrase bob
dole in them. |
bmx -game |
Search results have
the word bmx but not game. |
| suburl:edu
title:university |
Search results have university in
their title and edu in their url. |
| site:www.ibm.com "big
blue" |
Search results are
from www.ibm.com and have the phrase big blue in them. |
| url:www.yahoo.com |
Search result must
be nothing or the page http://www.yahoo.com/ |
| title:"the
news" -"weather report" |
Search results have
the phrase the news in their title, and do NOT have the phrase weather
report anywhere in their content. |
| ip:216.32.120
cars |
Search results have
the ip 216.32.120.* and have the word cars in their content. |
| link:www.yahoo.com |
Search results link
to http://www.yahoo.com/ |
-link:www.yahoo.com/clubs/
clubs |
Search results do
NOT link to http://www.yahoo.com/clubs/ and have the word clubs in
their content. |
type:pdf nutrition |
Search results are
PDF (Portable Document Format) documents that contain the word nutrition. |
type:doc |
Search results are
Microsoft Word documents. |
type:xls |
Search results are
Microsoft Excel documents. |
type:ppt |
Search results are
Microsoft Power Point documents. |
type:ps |
Search results are
Postscript documents. |
type:text |
Search results are
plain text documents. |
filetype:pdf |
Search results are
PDF documents. |
|
Boolean
Query
|
Description
|
|
Note: boolean operators
must be in upper case.
|
| cat AND dog |
Search results have
the word cat AND the word dog in them. |
| cat OR dog |
Search results have
the word cat OR the word dog in them, but preference is
given to results that have both words. |
| cat dog OR pig |
Search results have
the two words cat and dog OR search results have the word pig,
but preference is given to results that have all three words. This illustrates
how the individual words of one operand are all required for that operand
to be true. |
| "cat dog" OR
pig |
Search results have
the phrase "cat dog" in them OR they have the word pig,
but preference is given to results that have both. |
| title:"cat
dog" OR pig |
Search results have
the phrase "cat dog" in their title OR they have the word pig,
but preference is given to results that have both. |
| cat OR dog OR
pig |
Search results need
only have one word, cat or dog or pig, but preference
preference is given to results that have the most of the words. |
| cat OR dog AND
pig |
Search results have dog and pig,
but they may or may not have cat. Preference is given to results
that have all three. To evaluate expressions with more than two operands,
as in this case where we have three, you can divide the expression up
into sub-expressions that consist of only one operator each. In this
case we would have the following two sub-expressions: cat OR dog and dog
AND pig. Then, for the original expression to be true, at least one
of the sub-expressions that have an OR operator must be true, and, in
addition, all of the sub-expressions that have AND operators must be
true. Using this logic you can evaluate expressions with more than one
boolean operator. |
| cat AND NOT
dog |
Search results have cat but
do not have dog. |
| cat AND NOT
(dog OR pig) |
Search results have cat but
do not have dog and do not have pig. When evaluating a
boolean expression that contains ()'s you can evaluate the sub-expression
in the ()'s first. So if a document has dog or it has pig or
it has both, then the expression, (dog OR pig) would be true.
So you could, in this case, substitute true for that expression
to get the following: cat AND NOT (true) = cat AND false = false.
Does anyone actually read this far? |
| (cat OR dog)
AND NOT (cat AND dog) |
Search results have cat or dog but
not both. |
| left-operand operator right-operand |
This is the general
format of a boolean expression. The possible operators are: OR and AND.
The operands can themselves be boolean expressions and can be optionally
enclosed in parentheses. A NOT operator can optionally preceed the left
or the right operand. |