Search Help
How to Use the Simple Search Function
Using the Search can be as simple as entering a single word or multiple words separated by spaces in the Search field. The search engine will return a list of the documents, which contain the results of the query.
Surrounding the words with double quotes to signify a phrase will produce a search for all pages containing the complete phrase. Note that capitals are ignored.
How to Do a Complex Search
You can focus a query to give more refined results as follows:
- To look for words with the same prefix:
Type: key* to find key, keying, keyhole, keyboard, and so on. - To search for all forms of a word:
Type: sink** to find sink, sinking, sank, and sunk. - To look for the words system and manager on the same page:
Type: system near manager
With NEAR, the returned pages are ranked in order of proximity. - To find all instances of surfing but not the Net:
Type: surfing AND NOT the Net. - To find all instances of surfing and Net:
Type: surfing AND Net - To find all instances of either one word or another or both:
Type: Abbott OR Costello or Abbot, Costello
This query finds all pages that mention Abbott or Costello or both. - To take keywords literally, put quotation marks around them:
Type: "system manager and" - To look for a complete phrase:
Type: System Management Manual - To enter queries using natural language. To determine information on:
How to use the Server,
Type: $contents How do I use the Server?
With free text queries, one can enter any text, from a proper question,
to a string of words and phrases, without worrying about the query
language.
Note: When using free text queries, the regular query language
features are disabled and keywords such as AND, OR, and NEAR
are interpreted as normal words. - In order to optimize queries, the Search form IGNORES the following
words and characters:
about, after, all, also, an, and, another, any, are, as, at, be, because, been, before, being, between, both, but, by, came, can, come, could, did, do, each, for, from, get, got, has, had, he, have, her, here, him, himself, his, how, if, in, into, is, it, like, make, many, me, might, more, most, much, must, my, never, now, of, on, only, or, other, our, out, over, said, same, see, should, since, some, still, such, take, than, that, the, their, them, then, there, these, they, this, those, through, to, too, under, up, very, was, way, we, well, were, what, where, which, while, who, with, would, you, your, a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z, $ 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 _,
If your query contains only these words you will get the message:
"The query contained only ignored words".
Advanced Search Criteria
The advanced search criteria are very useful for performing more precise searches. When saving a Web page, the server automatically saves specific page information such as the page title, metadata, content, etc.
Available advanced search options are:
- Subject: Type word(s) or a phrase you would find in the meta tag dc.subject content="..." field.
- Keyword: Type single or multiple comma delimited words as defined in the keywords content="..." field.
- Creator: Type a name, group or organization as defined in the meta tag dc.creator content="..." field.
- Published: Defaults to anytime. You can search for Web pages, which were modified in the last: 10 minutes, hour, day, week, month or year by selecting from the list of values. Note that the modified date is the timestamp created when the file was last saved (date last modified) not the dc.date.modified meta tag.
To find the metadata embedded in a specific Web page: view the page with your Web browser, right click with the cursor on the page content and select the "View Source" menu option. Scroll to the top of the page to locate data similar to that shown below:
...
<meta name="dc.language" scheme="ISO639-2" content="eng" />
<meta name="dc.title" content="Information Management Group Homepage" />
<meta name="dc.subject" scheme="gccore" content="Armed forces; Information management;" />
<meta name="dc.date.created" content="2006-08-12" />
<meta name="dc.date.issued" content="2006-08-12" />
<meta name="dc.date.modified" content="2008-01-28" />
<meta name="dnd.date.nextReviewDate" content="2009-02-01" />
<meta name="keywords" content="adm(im), information management group, department of national defence, canadian forces" />
<meta name="description" content="Welcome to the Information Management Group Website." />
<meta content="text/html; charset=windows-1252" http-equiv="Content-Type" />
<meta name="dc.format" scheme="gcformat" content="text/html" />
<meta name="dc.creator" content="Government of Canada, National Defence, Information Management Group" />
...
<title>Information Management Group Homepage</title>
...
Language
The search results are filtered using the language of the search form and the language identified on the Web pages searched. If you are looking for English documents, then search using the English search form. On the other hand, if you are looking for French documents, then click on the "Français" top menu option to perform French searches.
Note that English Boolean operators are used in both French and English Searches.
OR
replaces OU, AND replaces
ET, NEAR replaces
PRES, and AND NOT replaces
ET SANS.
