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Search Help

The Search feature retrieves information from the past seven years of Brian Livingston's columns.

Simple Search

Simple Search returns articles that contain all the words in your query. Options to search using "Any Words" instead of "All Words" and to change the scope of your searches in other ways are available by using Advanced Search.

Search Options

To get more specific search results, try using the following tips:

Check spelling
Use multiple words: Example: our free product
Use similar words: Example: safe secure privacy security
Use appropriate capitalization: Example: Search Template Reference
Use quotation marks: Example: "our pledge to you"
Use plus (+) or minus (-): Example: +"Windows 2000" -XP

Use field searches: Examples: title:about desc:"Our Team" keys:login body:security alt:"join now" url:help target:Atomz
Use wildcards: Examples:
wh* "wh* are" 415-*-*

Check spelling

Make sure your search terms are spelled correctly. With Sound-Alike Matching turned on (in Advanced Search), the search engine will attempt to find words that sound similar to your search terms, but it's always best to try to spell the search terms correctly.
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Use multiple words

Using multiple words will return more refined results than a single word. For example, typing our free product will return more relevant results than typing just product. (Keep in mind that relevant results are returned even if they don't contain all query terms.)
Example: our free product
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Use similar words

Use appropriate capitalization

Capitalize proper nouns, and remember that lower-case words will match any case. For example, typing search will return all documents containing the words search, Search, and SEARCH. Typing Search, however, will instruct the search engine to look only for the capitalized word.
Example: Search Template Reference
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Use quotation marks

Use quotation marks to find words which must appear adjacent to each other, for example, "our pledge to you." Otherwise, the search results will include the word our, pledge, to, and the word you, but not necessarily in that order. The words may appear anywhere, and in any order, within the document.
Example: "our pledge to you"
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Use plus (+) or minus (-)

Use a plus sign when your search term or phrase must appear in the search results. Use a minus sign to indicate undesirable term(s). The plus sign tells the search engine that a certain word or phrase is required in the search results, and a minus sign indicates that a word or phrase must be absent in the search results.
Note: A phrase must be contained within quotation marks. Leave no spaces between the plus or minus sign and the term.
Note: If you are using the Advanced Search Form with radio buttons for "any," "all," and "phrase," then plus and minus can only be used when the "any" radio button is selected. Plus and minus are ignored if the "all" or "phrase" radio buttons are selected.
Example: +"Windows 2000" -XP
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Use field searches

Field searches allow you to create specific searches for words that appear in a specific part of a document. A field search can be performed on body text (body:), title text (title:), alt text (alt:), meta description (desc:), meta key words (keys:), URL (url:) or meta target key words (target:). The field name should be in lower-case and immediately followed by a colon. There should be no spaces between the colon and the search term.
Note: The field searches can only be followed by a word or phrase. Phrases must be contained within quotation marks.
Note: if you are using the Advanced Search Form with a list box for the field name, then field names can only be entered before a word or phrase when the "any" option is selected. Specific field names are ignored if any other Advanced Search Form field is selected in the list box.
Examples:



                              title:about
                              desc:"Our Team"
                              keys:login
                              body:security
                              alt:"join now"
                              url:help
                              target:Atomz

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Use wildcards

Wildcard searches can expand the number of matches for a particular request. The * character is used as the wildcard character.
For instance, searching for wh* will find the words what, why, when, whether, and any other word that starts with wh.
Searching for *her* will find the words here, whether, together, gathering, and any other word that contains her anywhere in the word.
Wildcards may be combined with the standard plus (+) and minus (-) modifiers, quotes for phrases, as well as the field search specifiers.
+wh* -se*ch will find all pages which have a word that starts with wh and which does not contain a word that starts with se and ends with ch.
"wh* are" will find the phrases where are, what are, why are, etc.
Example: Examples:

 wh*
                              "wh* are"
                              415-*-*

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