Query Examples

Using these examples, you can write queries that will return exactly the information you want.

Finding Words

Most queries can be written by entering the words and phrases you're interested in, separated by commas. If you were looking for information about the Web or about using laptop computers, you could enter: web, laptop computers

This query returns documents that contain the terms "Web" (case doesn't matter in queries), "laptop computers," or both. Your results list will display a ranked list of documents, with the most relevant documents at the top of the list.

Finding Phrases

Perhaps you want to see documents that refer to a series of words that occur in a specific order, such as "Web publishing with HTML". You could enter the whole phrase: web publishing with html

This query returns only documents that contain all of these words in the exact sequence you specified, including stemmed variations of the search terms.

Finding a Specific Subject

The simple query returned some documents about the Web, some documents about laptop computers, and some about both subjects. If your real interest is in accessing the Web using a laptop computer, you can use the AND operator to be more specific. You could enter: web AND laptop computers

This query returns only those documents that contain both "Web" and "laptop computers" in the same document, so this list will be shorter than the results of the query written using commas. (You can enter AND in lower case and it will still be treated as an operator.)

AND is treated as an operator unless it is surrounded by quotation marks. So if you want to use the word "and" as part of a phrase, place it inside quotation marks. For example, to search for the phrase "addresses and URLs", you would enter: addresses "and" URLs

Excluding Terms

You might want to specifically exclude certain documents from your results list. For example, you might want to see documents about most Web browsers, but you're not interested in Lynx. You could enter: web browser NOT lynx

This query returns only documents referring to Web browsers that do not also mention Lynx. If a document includes both "Web browser" and "Lynx," it will be excluded