Search Engine Help

Search Help

To find information about a topic, simply type in a few keywords. The more detailed your query, the more relevant your results.

Our search engine also comes with some advanced capabilities to help you find exactly what you're looking for. These capabilities are best shown with a few examples:
Note on case sensitivity - only search words or phrases containing an upper case character will be treated as case sensitive. A search on "internet" will match "Internet", "INTERNET", and "InTerNet", while the search term "INTERNET" would match only links with INTERNET (in uppercase) in them.
Prefacing a search term with a "special" character can greatly help you to narrow your searches....

Symbol

Translation

Example

Usage

+ / and
Require this term +internet Will only display listings that contain the word "internet"

-
Forbid this term -web
or ...

+internet -web
Will only display listings that DO NOT contain the word "web"

or
Prefer this term +internet or web This will find all listings containing "internet", and will rank those that also contain the word "web" a bit higher. (since web is "preferred")

" "
Exactly match this phrase "Internet Help" This will find all listing that contain the phrase "Internet Help". Note that using the quote marks forces the engine into a case-sensitive search.

url:
Find all entries belonging to a given domain or matching a file name url:www.mysite.com
url:*asp
The top example will return all entries in the www.mysite.com domain. The lower example shows how you could find every .asp page listed in the engine.

mailto
Find all entries submitted by a person with this email address
mailto:fred@mysite.com

mailto:fred@mysi*
This is a convenience search, if you know who posted a link (or want to see if a certain person has posted any links, this is how you'd find them.

*
Match anything
inter*

You can use the asterisk as a "wildcard" to match parts of a word. In our example, the search would return any listing with any word starting with "inter". The asterisk does have one limitation: it cannot span words - that is, the query "mat*arts" would not match the first sentence of this description - and it can represent at most four letters or numbers. To avoid overly broad searches, the asterisk can only be used in words or phrases which have at least three characters, so a search for "th*" or "an*" would be ignored.

Symbol	Translation	Example	Usage
+ / and	Require this term	+internet	Will only display listings that contain the word "internet"
-	Forbid this term	-web or ... +internet -web	Will only display listings that DO NOT contain the word "web"
or	Prefer this term	+internet or web	This will find all listings containing "internet", and will rank those that also contain the word "web" a bit higher. (since web is "preferred")
" "	Exactly match this phrase	"Internet Help"	This will find all listing that contain the phrase "Internet Help". Note that using the quote marks forces the engine into a case-sensitive search.
url:	Find all entries belonging to a given domain or matching a file name	url:www.mysite.com url:asp*	The top example will return all entries in the www.mysite.com domain. The lower example shows how you could find every .asp page listed in the engine.
mailto	Find all entries submitted by a person with this email address	mailto:fred@mysite.com mailto:fred@mysi*	This is a convenience search, if you know who posted a link (or want to see if a certain person has posted any links, this is how you'd find them.
*	Match anything	inter*	You can use the asterisk as a "wildcard" to match parts of a word. In our example, the search would return any listing with any word starting with "inter". The asterisk does have one limitation: it cannot span words - that is, the query "matarts" would not match the first sentence of this description - and it can represent at most four letters or numbers. To avoid overly broad searches, the asterisk can only be used in words or phrases which have at least three characters, so a search for "th" or "an*" would be ignored.