|
Symbol
|
Translation
|
Example
|
Usage
|
|
+ /
and
|
Require this term |
+internet |
Will only display listings
that contain the word "internet" |
|
-
|
Forbid this term |
-web
or ...
+internet -web
|
Will only display listings
that DO NOT contain the word "web" |
|
or
|
Prefer this term |
+internet or web |
This will find all listings
containing "internet", and will rank those that also contain
the word "web" a bit higher. (since web is "preferred") |
|
"
"
|
Exactly match this phrase |
"Internet Help" |
This will find all listing
that contain the phrase "Internet Help". Note that using
the quote marks forces the engine into a case-sensitive search. |
|
url:
|
Find all entries belonging
to a given domain or matching a file name |
url:www.mysite.com
url:*asp
|
The top example will
return all entries in the www.mysite.com
domain. The lower example shows how you could find every .asp page
listed in the engine. |
|
mailto
|
Find all entries submitted
by a person with this email address |
mailto:fred@mysite.com
mailto:fred@mysi*
|
This is a convenience
search, if you know who posted a link (or want to see if a certain
person has posted any links, this is how you'd find them. |
|
*
|
Match anything |
inter*
|
You can use the asterisk
as a "wildcard" to match parts of a word. In our example,
the search would return any listing with any word starting with
"inter". The asterisk does have one limitation: it cannot
span words - that is, the query "mat*arts" would not
match the first sentence of this description - and it can represent
at most four letters or numbers. To avoid overly broad searches,
the asterisk can only be used in words or phrases which have at
least three characters, so a search for "th*" or "an*"
would be ignored.
|