Search Guidelines

General Principles for Advanced Searches

Using quotes to find more exact matches
Say you want to find information about the story Treasure Island. If you type in the two words, Treasure Island, the search engine will look for all pages that contain either word anywhere on the page. But if you want to find instances of the two words appearing together, surround the two words with quotation marks: "Treasure Island".

Using special search words like AND, NEAR, NOT, and OR

1) If you type in Treasure AND Island you will find pages containing both words, either next to each other, or not next to each other.

2) If you type in Treasure NEAR Island you will find only pages containing both words when they are within 7 words of each other.

3) If you type in Treasure NOT Island you will find pages containing Treasure, but you won't find any pages containing the word Island.

4) If you type in Treasure OR Island you will find pages containing either word, but not both words.

Back