Specific phrases

You can search for specific phrases by adding " " (quotation marks) around text. For example:

  • "chicken tray" will return items containing the phrase “chicken tray” only. Items containing just the words “chicken” or “tray” or “chicken packaging tray” will not be included in the search results.

Wildcards

The wildcard character * can be used to search for incomplete words. For example:

  • clean* will return items containing words beginning with “clean”, for example “clean”, “cleaner” and “cleaning”.
  • *wrap will return items containing words ending with “wrap”, for example “shrinkwrap” and “bubblewrap”.

The * wildcard character will match any number of missing characters. To search for a single missing character, use the single character wildcard ?. For example:

  • ca? will match “car”, “can” and “cab” but not “cabinet”.

Boolean Operators

You can create advanced search criteria by incorporating the logical operators AND and OR:

  • chicken AND tray will return items containing the words “chicken” AND “tray”.
  • chicken OR tray will return items containing the words “chicken” OR “tray”.

You can create combinations of terms by enclosing items in brackets:

  • (chicken AND tray) OR (cleaning AND wallchart)

You can also use the logical operators in combination with quotation marks and wildcards. For example:

  • "chicken tray" OR ca* will return items containing the phrase “chicken tray” OR words beginning with “ca”.

Note that all searches are case-insensitive - typing “CHICKEN” or “chicken” will return the same results.

Fuzzy Searches

A fuzzy search finds words with similar spellings to the word entered. To perform a fuzzy search, enter ~ (tilde symbol) at the end of a single word term.

  • clean~ will return items containing terms with similar spellings to "clean", like "lean" and "clear".

Proximity Searches

A proximity search finds words that are within a specific distance of each other. To perform a proximity search, enclose the two words in " " (quotation marks) then add ~ (tilde symbol) and the distance to search at the end, eg. "plastic tray"~3.

  • "plastic tray"~3 will return items where "plastic" and "tray" are within 3 words of each other.

Range Searches

Range queries will retrieve documents whose field values are between a specific lower and upper bound. The range can be inclusive or exclusive of the upper / lower bound. Sorting is done lexicographically. To specify a range query, enter the field name followed by colon and then the field range in brackets, eg. mod_date:[20020101 TO 20030101] or title:{Chicken TO Seafood}. [ ] (square brackets) denote an inclusive range while { } (curly brackets) denote an exclusive range.

  • mod_date:[20020101 TO 20030101] will return items whose "mod_date" field has values between "20020101" and "20030101", inclusive.
  • title:{Chicken TO Seafood} will return items whose titles are between "Chicken" and "Seafood", but not including "Chicken" and "Seafood".

Boosting a Term

The search engine automatically calculates the relevance of matching documents based on the terms found. To manually "boost" the relevance of a particular term in the search results, use the ^ (caret symbol) with a "boost factor" index, eg. chicken^4. The higher the boost factor, the more relevant the term will be when results are calculated - so content with boosted search terms will be promoted to the top.

  • chicken^4 tray will return content with both "chicken" and "tray" but where "chicken" will be four times more relevant than "tray" when ordering final search results.

You can also boost literal expressions (see "Specific phrases", above). For example:

  • "chicken tray"^4 "plastic wrap" will return content with both "chicken tray" and "plastic wrap" but where "chicken tray" will be four times more relevant than "plastic wrap" when ordering final search results.

By default the boost factor is 1. It can be made less than 1, eg. 0.2, to "demote" particular search terms, eg. chicken tray^0.2.

Escaping Special Characters

Certain characters such as { } or & are reserved for specific functions in the search engine. The full list of reserved characters is: + - & | ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \. To search for these special characters in content fields, prefix the character with \, eg. \+ or \{

  • "Chicken\&Seafood Tray \(2015\)" will return items containing the exact text "Chicken&Seafood Tray (2015)".