Hints for more effective Searching

You can use "and", "or", or "not" in searching (These are called "booleans" by computer hacks -- they are basic logical operators). Without these booleans, the search engine will assume you're "anding" the words together. That means that it will look for documents that contain both words (X AND Y) -- or all words if you enter more than two.

Evaluation takes place from left to right only, although you can use parentheses to force the order of evaluation.

You can also use wildcards (signified by asterisks, "*") to search for matches to the beginnings of words only -- you can't put asterisks at the front or in the middle of words.

Here are some examples:

john and doe or jane

This search evaluates the expression from left to right. It will return pages that contain both the words "john" and "doe" as well as pages that contain the word "jane" (even if the jane pages don't have a "john" or a "doe").

john and (doe or not jane)

This search will also be evaluated from left to right, although the operation in parentheses will be evaluated as a whole first.

not (john or jane) and doe

john or jane will be evaluated first, a not operation will be performed on that, then everything will be anded with doe. That way you get any doe that's not a john or a jane.

j* and doe

This will search for all files that contain words starting with the letter j and that also contain doe.

Understanding the Results:

The first number is the "relevance rank". This number is generated with each result and is the program's "best guess" as to how relevant it thinks the file is to your query. This rank number, which can range from 1 to 1000, depends on a number of factors, such as how many times your search word appears in the file, how many words are in the file, and if the word appears in a title or header tag (if it's an HTML file), among other factors.

Next is the title of the file. This may also be the name of the file (if there is no title). It is a hotlink to the file itself.

err: no results

There were no results of the search. Try being less specific; use fewer keywords and "or" instead of "and."

err: no search words specified

No words were specified for searching. Go back and enter some keywords.

err: a word is too common

A search word was used that was too common to give any meaningful feedback. Try being more specific.