"and" or "+" | Performs a boolean AND search, i.e. will find results with any of the different words in |
| |
( ) | Used to signify precedence |
| Note that unlike mathematics - the operator which takes precedence is the OR operator as opposed to the AND operator. Therefore, example one and two are interpreted the same, and will find either cats or mice but they must be brown If this wasn't your intention then you can change the precedence by putting brackets round the words you would like to take precedence. E.g. the third example will find cats of any colour and it will also find mice but only if they are brown. |
* | Performs a wildcard search - can only be used at the end of words | cat* | will match e.g. "cat" , "cats", "category", etc. Note that this is done automatically so unnecessary to append. If you don't want automatic wildcarding then use quote marks for a literal search. |
- | Performs a boolan NOT search, i.e. will exclude results when used in conjunction with other words - although see notes |
| Note that even though a space signifies an OR search (see below), if you put a dash before a word then we change the preceding space (i.e. an OR) to an AND/+ as this is almost always what you would want -i.e. give me results with "cat" AND not mouse. |
Quote marks | Performs a literal search | "cat and mouse" | Only entries with exactly the phrase "cat and mouse" in it will be returned |
Space or "or" or "|" | Performs a boolean OR search, i.e. will find results with any of the different words in |
| Even though entries with either "cat" or "mouse" will be returned, entries with both "cat" and "mouse" will be returned with a higher ranking, and entries with the exact phrase "cat mouse" will be returned with the highest ranking |
