Search Help

A search query is constructed from one or more of the following elements.

Boolean Queries e.g. free (wave OR midi) NOT classical
Phrase Searches e.g. "The Sound of Music"
Approximate Phrase Searches e.g. { election campaign speech }
Wildcard Searches e.g. { walk* or hik* }
Qualifiers, like url, title, text, and many more

Combined Example:
(motor mechanic) or (automotive engineer) {transmission specialist} "South Australia"

Query Language Features

Boolean Queries

A boolean query is one which uses basic logic operators to combine keywords, and is specified using + or AND, - or NOT, | or OR. If none of these are given, AND is assumed. The symbolic forms may or may not be surrounded by spaces; the word forms must be have spaces. Queries are interpreted with AND having higher precendence than OR, so Sadie or cleaning lady is interpreted as Sadie or (cleaning and lady)

Examples:

Search for Sadie and cleaning:
Sadie cleaning
or equivalently: Sadie AND cleaning
or: Sadie + cleaning
or: +Sadie +cleaning

Search for Sadie but not cleaning:
Sadie NOT cleaning
or equivalently: Sadie - cleaning
or: Sadie AND NOT cleaning
or: Sadie -cleaning
or +Sadie -cleaning

Search for Sadie or lady, providing cleaning is in the same document:
(Sadie OR lady) AND cleaning
or: (Sadie | lady) cleaning
or: +Sadie +cleaning | +lady +cleaning

Phrase Searches

A phrase search is specified by delimiting the phrase in double quotes.

Examples:

Search for the phrase Sadie the cleaning lady: "Sadie the cleaning lady". This will match Sadie the cleaning lady and Sadie, the cleaning lady and Sadie the Cleaning Lady, but not Sadie was a most popular cleaning lady.

Approximate Phrase Queries

An approximate phrase query, or proximity query, requires the words to be within about 200 words of each other. A proximity search is specified by curly braces.

Examples:

The search {Sadie cleaning lady} will match Sadie the cleaning lady and Sadie was Australia's biggest selling cleaning lady.

Wilcard Queries

A wildcard query is a way to search for variations of a given word. Two wildcard operators are available:

? matches any single character
* matches any sequence of characters

Because there is the potential for a search term to match a very large number of words, there are limits on how many matching terms will be returned. By default, there must be at least three fixed adjacent characters given in the query term or the query will be rejected, and the first 20 matching words will be used.

Examples:

The search Sad* will match Sadie, sad, sadly, sadness, etc
cl??n will match clean and clown

Qualifiers

A qualifier places additional constraints on the search. These are summarised in the table below. Several qualifiers may be combined with other types of queries.

Note: Qualifiers are best entered using the advanced search page.

*Qualifiers in the Query Language*
Field	Explanation	Example
title	Query terms are contained in the title	title:(aardvark sings)
url	Query terms are contained in the URL	url:amazon
text	Query terms are contained in the body of the text	text:("The quick" -fox)
type	Results are limited to the specified document type	type:pdf type:html type:msword
meta-description	Query terms are contained in the META description field	meta-description:(nuclear physics)
sound	Find words that sound like the query terms. This can be useful if you're not sure of the exact spelling of a word.	sound:Stevens sound-custom:Stevens
syn	Find similar words. Synonym expansion is not enabled by default for all queries, so you may have to use the syn: qualifier.	syn:UNESCO syn-acronym:UNESCO
stem	Find words with the same stem with a plural stemmer, so that when you search for "man" it also finds instances of "men" and vice-versa. Another way to search on a word stem is to use wildcards, e.g. job? or danc* Normally, stem-based expansion will be enabled for all queries, so there is no need to use the stem: qualifier.	stem:job stem-plural:job

Tips, Hints and Suggestions

Check your brackets, braces and quotation marks to ensure they are "balanced".

Qualifiers and other syntax may be combined. For example, search for the word "Sadie" or "cleaning" in the title or Description meta tags: title,meta-description:(Sadie or cleaning).