By default, search results are sorted by relevance, with the most relevant result appearing at the top of the page. If you want to sort the documents by date instead, click the Sort by Date link. The most recent document appears at the top of the page and the date of each file is returned in the results. Results that do not contain dates are displayed at the end and are sorted by relevance.
When you search for numbers, do not use exponential numbers, such as "1e10," or negative integers, such as "-12."
Numbers that are separated by commas are treated as separate figures, not fractional numbers; that is, the comma is treated as a term separator, not a decimal separator. For example, if you type "3,75", the search query is treated as a search for two separate terms, "3" and "75", not the decimal fraction, "three and three quarters." Commas that separate every three digits are ignored and are not necessary. For example, both "10,000" and "10000" are treated alike.
Refining Your Search
Since the search appliance returns only web pages that contain all of the words in your query, refining or narrowing your search is as simple as adding more words to the search terms you have already entered. The refined query returns a subset of the pages that were returned by your original broad query. If that does not get the results that you want, you can try to exclude words, search for exact phrases, or restrict the search to a range of numbers. These techniques are described in the following subsections.
Word Exclusion
If your search term has more than one meaning, you can focus your search by adding a minus sign ("-") in front of words related to the meaning you want to avoid. Make sure you include a space before the minus sign. You can daisy chain a list of words you want to exclude.
For example, to search for the planet Saturn and exclude search results about the car company or Roman god, type the following query:
The search appliance returns pages about Saturn that do not contain the word "car" or "god."
Phrase Searches
Phrase searches are useful when you are searching for famous sayings or specific names. You can search for an exact phrase or name in the following ways:
- By enclosing the phrase in quotation marks. The search appliance only returns documents that include the exact phrase you entered.
- By using phrase connectors—such as hyphens, slashes, periods, equal signs, and apostrophes—in between every word of your search query.
Phrase connectors and quotation marks join your search words as a single unit. For example, if you type the following query, the search appliance treats it as a phrase search even though the search words are not enclosed in quotation marks.
Range Searches
You can confine your search query within a certain range. You can set ranges for dates, weights, prices, meta tags, and so on. The following subsections describe ways you can refine your searches with ranges.
Number Ranges
To search for documents or items that contain numbers within a range, type your search term and the range of numbers separated by two periods (".."). You can set ranges for weights ("250..500 g carbon fork"), dimensions ("90..100 mm stem"), years ("tour de france 2000..2006"), prices in dollar currencies only ("bike lights $10..$30"), and so on. Be sure to specify a unit of measurement or some other indicator of what the number range represents.
For example, to search for pencils that cost between $1.50 and $2.50, type the following:
Each number in the range should not include more than six significant digits. For example, if you were to type the search query, "1..1234567 ton truck," only the first six significant digits in the "1234567" would be included in the range search; that is, it is as though you have just typed, "1..1234560 ton truck."
Date Ranges
You can search for documents that contain dates that fall within a time frame. To use date range search, type all of the following:
- The search term
- The daterange: operator
- The start date
- The range separator (which is two periods if you are using a YYYY-MM-DD format or a hyphen if you are using a Julian format)
- The end date
Do not add a space between the search operator and the date range. The dates could be in either of the following formats:
- The YYYY-MM-DD (ISO 8601) format. Date ranges using this format should be separated by two periods ("..").
- The Julian format. The Julian date is calculated by the number of days since January 1, 4713 BC. For example, the Julian date for August 1, 2001 is 2452122. Date ranges in this format should be separated by a hyphen ("-").
For example, to search for a document about Harry Potter that was modified within a specific two-year period, type the following:
The earliest date that you can use in your date range search is January 1, 1900; and the latest date, June 6, 2079.
Metadata and Meta Tag Ranges
You can search only for documents that include metadata or meta tags that contain numbers within the range you specified. To use metadata range search, type all of the following:
- The search term
- The inmeta: operator
- The name of metadata or meta tag
- The range of numbers separated by two periods ("..")
For accurate date range searches with inmeta
, the meta tag content must contain only the date and no other data. Suppose your documents have metadata called "modified" that contains the last modified dates of the documents. To search for a document about risks that was created sometime in 2006, you could type the following:
You can use the inmeta
operator beyond just searching for documents with metadata that includes a range of dates or numbers. To learn more about inmeta
, see the Search Protocol Reference on the public search appliance documentation page.
Advanced Search Operators
The search appliance supports several advanced operators, which are query words that restricts your search to a smaller set of documents. When you enter your search query, do not add a space between the search operator and the search terms.