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Site Search Help
Forming a
query - Top - The Webinator's
search can be as simple or as complex as you need it to be. Usually you will
just need to enter a few words that best describe that which you are trying to
locate. To perform more complicated searches you might use any combination of
logic operators, special pattern matchers, concept expansion, or proximity
operations.
Example: nature conservation organization
Query Rules of Thumb:
- If you get too many junk or nonsense
answers, try:
- Add some more words to your query.
- Decrease the range of the Proximity
control.
- Change the Word Forms control to Exact.
- Look at the Match Info and see why they
are showing up.
- Use the Exclusion Operator (-) to remove
unwanted terms.
- If you are searching for a phrase,
hyphenate the words together.
- If you don't get any answers, or just too
few:
- Remove some more words to your query.
- Examine your spelling.
- Increase the scope of the Proximity
control.
- It just might not be there?
Overview of query abilities
- Controlling proximity:
Mastering the usage of proximity gives the ability to locate answers with
greater precision. The Site Search input form gives you several options to
control the search proximity:
- line
All query terms must occur on the same line
- sentence
Query items should all reside within the same sentence
- paragraph
Within the same paragraph or text block
- page (default)
All items must occur within same HTML document
The bar-graph display ( 
) will be shown any time a ranking search was performed (eg. all
searches except Show Parents). More blue
indicates a better match.
- Ranking Factors
The ranking algorithm takes into consideration relative word ordering,
word proximity, database frequency, document frequency, and position in
text. The relative importance of these factors in computing the quality of
a hit can be altered under RANKING FACTORS on the Options page.
- Keywords
Phrases and Wild-cards:
To locate words, just type them in as you would in a word processor.
Letter cases will be ignored.
The wild-card character * (asterisk) may be
used to match just the prefix of a word or to ignore the middle of
something.
To locate a number of adjacent words in a
specific order, surround them with " (double quotation) characters.
Putting a '-' (hyphen) between words will also force order and one word
proximity.
Examples:
| Query |
Locates |
| john |
john, John |
| "john public" |
John Public |
| web-browser |
Web browser, web-browser |
| John*Public |
John Q. Public, John Public |
| 456*a*def |
1-23456-789-ABCDEF |
| activate |
activate, activation, activated... (see
Word Forms) |
The wild-card character * (asterisk) may be
used to match just the prefix of a word or to ignore the middle of something.
To locate a number of adjacent words in a
specific order, surround them with " (double quotation) characters.
Putting a '-' (hyphen) between words will also force order and one word
proximity.
Examples:
| Query |
Locates |
| john |
john, John |
| "john public" |
John Public |
| web-browser |
Web browser, web-browser |
| John*Public |
John Q. Public, John Public |
| 456*a*def |
1-23456-789-ABCDEF |
| activate |
activate, activation, activated... (see
Word Forms) |
- Applying
Search Logic
Texis and Metamorph use set logic for text queries. Set logic is easier to
use and provides more abilities than boolean. The examples below make
reference to single keywords, but keep in mind that each keyword can
represent an entire list of things or any of the special pattern matchers.
Sets (or lists) of things are specified by
placing the elements within parenthesis, separated by commas. example: (bob,joe,sam,sue).
In the examples below, you could replace any of the keywords with a list
like this.
The default behavior of the search is to
locate an intersection (or 'AND') of every element within a query. This
means that the query; "microsoft bob interface" is the
equivalent to the boolean query: "microsoft AND bob AND
interface"
- '-' (without)
The '-'(minus) is the most commonly used logic symbol. It means
the answer should EXCLUDE references to that item.
- '+' (mandatory)
The '+'(plus) symbol in front of a search item means that the
answer MUST INCLUDE that item. This is generally used in conjunction
with the permutation operation.
- '@N' (permute)
The '@' followed by a number indicates how many intersections
to locate of the terms in your query. This may be confusing at first,
but it is very powerful.
Notes: Only the '+' and '-'
operations are valid with a relevance rank search.
Examples:
| Query |
Finds |
| bob sam joe |
Bob with Sam and Joe (within the
selected proximity) |
| bob sam -joe |
Bob with Sam without Joe |
| bob sam joe @1 |
Bob with Sam, or, Bob with Joe, or, Joe
with Sam |
| A B C D @1 |
AB or AC or AD or BC or BD or CD |
| +A B C D @1 |
ABC or ABD or ACD |
| A B C -D @1 |
( AB or AC or BC ) without D |
To expand the meaning of a word or phrase
within your query, precede it with a '~' (tilde) character.
Using
word forms - Top - The Word forms
options give you control over how many variations of your query terms will be
sought in your search.
- Exact: (default) Only exact
matches will be allowed.
- Plural & posessives: Plural and
possessive forms will be found. (s, es, 's)
- Any word forms: As many word forms as
can be derived will be located.
EXAMPLES:
president
EXACT : president
PLURAL: (above) + presidents president's
ANY : (above) + presidential presidency preside presides presiding presided
tight
EXACT : tight
PLURAL: (above) + tights
ANY : (above) + tightly tightening tightened tighter tightest
program
EXACT : programs
PLURAL: (above) + programs program's
ANY : (above) + programming programmatic programmed programmer programmable
We call this morpheme processing, and it is
generally smarter than a traditional "stemming" algorithm. It
doesn't just rip the end off a word, it actually checks to see if it could be
a valid form of the search term.
Notes: Thesaurus terms are also treated
in the same manner. Words smaller than 4-5 characters will not be processed.
Controlling
proximity - Top - These options give
you control over the region in which a match must be found.
- line: match terms must be located
within the same line.
- sentence: all terms within the same
sentence.
- paragraph: match terms must be
located within the same paragraph
- page: (default) all terms within the
same document.
In all cases the best possible matches for your
query are located and ordered by decreasing quality. A bar graph is produced
to indicate the quality of each answer.
Interpreting
search results - Top - When a query
is submitted it will come back with another query form and up to 10 matching
documents. If there are more than 10 answers, a link at the top and bottom of
the list will allow you to view the next 10 in sequence.
The input form at the top allows you further
tailor your query to home-in on the desired answers, or to submit a completely
new query without having to navigate back to the original input form.
Each answer in the result set will
have a format similar to the following:
The components of each result are:
- Result number
- Document title ( clicking on this will
take you to the original document )
- Abstract (The first few hundred
characters of the document )
- Match quality graph. 84%
( Only shown if relevancy ranking was used )
- Size ( How big is the original document )
- Depth ( How many clicks from the top of
the site )
- Find Similar ( Find other documents
similar to this one )
- Match Info ( View the matches and other
information about the document )
- Show Parents ( List pages that link to
this one )
Viewing
match info - Top - The Match
Info link will show you the context of your answers within the matching
document. Matching words will be shown as hypertext links.
Clicking on any match term will
take you to the next matching term. A summary at the top of the in-context
view shows information about the document including the time it was last
modified.
Finding
similar documents - Top - The Find
Similar link will find documents that are similar to the corresponding
result. It does this by reading the original document to ascertain its main
subject matter, and then conducting a relevance ranked search for those
subjects.
Result documents are ordered from best to worst
match. The bargraph display will indicate the overall quality of the match.
Note:The document you click on may
not be ranked as the best match. This is because other documents may contain
more information about the overall subject matter than the original.
Showing
document parents - Top - Often
times it is difficult to navigate using a search engine because there is no
back-link present on the matching document. The Show
Parents link solves this.
This link will show other documents that
contain hyperlinks to the one you click on. In other words, it is an automated
back button.
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