Site Search Help

• Forming a query
• Using word forms
• Controlling proximity
• Interpreting search results
• Viewing match info
• Finding similar documents
• Viewing document parents

Forming a query - Top - Back

Example: nature conservation organization

Query Rules of Thumb:

• If you get too many junk or nonsense answers, try:
  1. Add some more words to your query.
  2. Decrease the range of the Proximity control.
  3. Change the Word Forms control to Exact.
  4. Look at the Match Info and see why they are showing up.
  5. Use the Exclusion Operator (-) to remove unwanted terms.
  6. If you are searching for a phrase, put double quotes (") around it.

• If you don't get any answers, or just too few:
  1. Remove some more words to your query.
  2. Examine your spelling.
  3. Increase the scope of the Proximity control.
  4. 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 (a phrase), surround them with " (double quotation) characters.

  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

• Natural Language Query:
  You may enter a query in the form of a sentence or question. The software will automatically identify the important words and phrases within your query and remove the "noise words".

  Example:

  What is the state of the art in text retrieval?

  The software will search for:

  state of the art AND text AND retrieval

• Invoking Thesaurus Expansion
  Metamorph and Texis have an editable vocabulary of over 250,000 word and phrase associations. Each entry is generally classifiable by either its meaning or part of speech.

  To expand the meaning of a word or phrase within your query, precede it with a '~' (tilde) character.

Using word forms - Top - Back

• 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 

Notes: Thesaurus terms are also treated in the same manner. Words smaller than 4-5 characters will not be processed.

Controlling proximity - Top - Back

• 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.

Interpreting search results - Top - Back

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: