Advanced Search Options
Use these advanced search options to refine and perform complex searches.
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A leading plus sign indicates that this word must be present in each row that is returned.
Example: +apple +computer will return only quotes that contain both 'apple' and 'computer'.
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A leading minus sign indicates that this word must not be present in any of the rows that are returned.
Example: +apple -computer will return quotes that contain 'apple', but exclude 'computer'.
- By default (when neither nor is specified), the word is optional (ie. OR). When present, rows that contain it are rated higher for relevancy.
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These two operators are used to change a word's contribution to the relevance value that is assigned to a matching quote. The operator increases the contribution and the operator decreases it.
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( ) Parentheses group words into subexpressions. Parenthesized groups can be nested.
Example: +apple +(computer business) will return quotes that contain 'apple' and the phrase "computer business".
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~ A leading tilde acts as a negation operator, causing the word's contribution to the row's relevance to be negative. This is useful for marking “noise” words. A row containing such a word is rated lower than others, but is not excluded altogether, as it would be with the - operator.
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* The asterisk serves as the truncation (or wildcard) operator. Unlike the other operators, it is appended to the word to be affected. Words match if they begin with the word preceding the * operator.
Example: +apple* matches apple, apples, appleton, etc.
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" " A phrase that is enclosed within double quote (") characters matches only quotes that contain the phrase literally, as it was typed. Non-word characters need not be matched exactly: Phrase searching requires only that matches contain exactly the same words as the phrase and in the same order. For example, "test phrase" matches "test, phrase".
Example: "computer business" will return all quotes that contain the phrase "computer business".
Full Example: +apple +(turnover strudel) Find rows that contain the words "apple" and "turnover", or "apple" and "strudel" (in any order), but rank "apple turnover" higher than "apple strudel"