| Lesson 4 | Refining and expanding searches |
| Objective | Use advanced searching techniques to narrow or widen the search scope. |
Refining and Expanding Searches
Boolean operators will give you better results than a simple keyword search, but their use is often interpreted by search engines and
directories as "I (the searcher) prefer results meeting these conditions," not, "I want to see only results that meet these criteria." Often,
matching results will appear at the top of the list, but if you go a few pages further, you will begin to see results that are not as
accurate. There is a need for an operator that is more limiting.
Required and excluded terms
Required and excluded terms
Phrase Searching
You can group words together to make certain that they aer searched for as a phrase by placing them within quotation marks.
Some search engines allow you to create phrases by placing punctuation between the phrase's words or including them inside parentheses.
When you are searching, think of a phrase that describes your topic, such as
adult:continuing:educationor(adult continuing education).
When you are searching, think of a phrase that describes your topic, such as
"adult continuing education".
Using this phrase will ensure that your results include the words together, instead of returning a document that contains all three words,
but with no relationship to one another.
Recommendation for Optimal Search Results
- Use Quotation Marks for Exact Phrases: To search for the exact phrase "adult continuing education," enclose it in quotation marks:
"adult continuing education"
This tells Google to return only those pages where the words appear together in that exact order. - Combine with Other Operators (Optional):
- Exclude Terms: Use the minus sign to exclude certain words. For example:
"adult continuing education" -online
This searches for the exact phrase but excludes results that contain the word "online". - Site-Specific Search: To search within a specific website or domain:
site:example.com "adult continuing education"
- Use Wildcards: The asterisk (`*`) acts as a wildcard for one or more words within a phrase:
"adult * education"
This finds phrases like "adult continuing education," "adult basic education," etc.
- Exclude Terms: Use the minus sign to exclude certain words. For example:
Conclusion Between your two options:
- (adult continuing education) is more effective than `adult:continuing:education` because the colons may confuse the search engine.
- Best Practice: Use quotation marks to search for the exact phrase:
"adult continuing education"
This approach ensures more accurate and relevant search results by instructing Google to look for the specific phrase you're interested in.
Fuzzy logic technically refers to logic that is not categorically true or false. A common example is whether a day is sunny (i.e., is 50% cloud cover a sunny day?).
In search, fuzzy logic is often used for misspellings.
There will also be occasions when you may need to expand your search to cover multiple forms of a word, or a person's name that you are not sure how to spell... is it Johnson, Johnston, Johnstone, or maybe even Johnstayne? You could use Boolean ORs, but you might leave one possible spelling out. The better technique is to use an expanding operator, which is called a Wildcard and use
These operators cover most situations, but here is search problem that needs a different refinement.
If you were searching for information on adult education with
Proximity searching offers a solution by searching for keywords or phrases that occur next to or close to one another.
In search, fuzzy logic is often used for misspellings.
There will also be occasions when you may need to expand your search to cover multiple forms of a word, or a person's name that you are not sure how to spell... is it Johnson, Johnston, Johnstone, or maybe even Johnstayne? You could use Boolean ORs, but you might leave one possible spelling out. The better technique is to use an expanding operator, which is called a Wildcard and use
John* as your query.
These operators cover most situations, but here is search problem that needs a different refinement.
If you were searching for information on adult education with
"adult education", your results will not include documents that use
the phrase adult continuing education (phrase searching requires an exact match). However, if you search with +adult +education, your results could include documents that discuss adult acne and clear skin education.
Though both your keywords are individually present, you have not indicated that the results should exclude documents that do not
connect the two words.
Proximity searching offers a solution by searching for keywords or phrases that occur next to or close to one another.
Proximity operators used in Search
Proximity operators vary from engine to engine, but they all function following the same principle.
They allow you to specify how close you want two keywords or phrases to occur to each other in the documents being searched.
AltaVista uses NEAR (
Proximity operators also allow you to control the specific order of two words; should adult appear before (to the left of) education, or after it (to the right of)? Again, each engine has its own implementation for this functionality. Reading your search engine's help page will explain exactly how it implements word-order operators. Proximity searching allows you greater flexibility than phrase searching and higher accuracy rates than required-term searching.
AltaVista uses NEAR (
~), which guarantees that words or phrases will be within ten words of each other. Go Network uses square brackets
[]. Placing words in square brackets will return a document that contains both words if they are found within 100 words of each other.
Proximity operators also allow you to control the specific order of two words; should adult appear before (to the left of) education, or after it (to the right of)? Again, each engine has its own implementation for this functionality. Reading your search engine's help page will explain exactly how it implements word-order operators. Proximity searching allows you greater flexibility than phrase searching and higher accuracy rates than required-term searching.
- Proximity Searches: A proximity search uses the order of the search phrase to find related documents. For example, when you search for "prune juice" you are specifying only a precise proximity match. If the quotes are removed, the proximity of the search terms still matters to the search engine, but it will now show documents that do not exactly match the order of the search phrase, such as Pflaumensaft in German.
Proximity is the search technique used to find two words next to, near, or within a specified distance of each other within a document.
Using such search operators may result in more satisfactory results that are more relevant to the research needs than by just typing in desired keywords.
Some commands also control the terms order of appearance. Desired words can be in any order, a specific order, or within a certain range of each other. The following examples demonstrate the differences for a select few of the databases offered by Alliant that have proximity functions. Please check the Help link available on all of the databases for additional hints not covered by this search guide. Please note: capitalization is not important in any of these searches. [Note: Two words are treated as a fixed phrase, unless w is used between them.] Any order of 3 or more terms: words in phrases longer than 2 words are searched in any order and anywhere within the field specified. If they must be within a particular range of each other, surround the phrase with double quotation marks , or use the w command as follows:
Some commands also control the terms order of appearance. Desired words can be in any order, a specific order, or within a certain range of each other. The following examples demonstrate the differences for a select few of the databases offered by Alliant that have proximity functions. Please check the Help link available on all of the databases for additional hints not covered by this search guide. Please note: capitalization is not important in any of these searches. [Note: Two words are treated as a fixed phrase, unless w is used between them.] Any order of 3 or more terms: words in phrases longer than 2 words are searched in any order and anywhere within the field specified. If they must be within a particular range of each other, surround the phrase with double quotation marks , or use the w command as follows:
- w/# (# being any number from 1-25) between three or more words forces them to be within a specified number (#) of words of each other.
Find documents where these words are within some number of words apart (either before or after). Use when searching for keywords within "Citation and Document Text" or "Document Text." Example: computer W/3 careers - not w/# forces the words to be a minimum of x words apart.
Find documents where these words appear but are not within some number of words apart (either before or after).
Use when searching for keywords within "Citation and Document Text" or "Document Text."
Example: computer NOT W/2 careers - pre/# forces the words to be within a x number of each other, with the first term always first in the phrase order
Find documents where the first word appears some number of words before the second word.
Use when searching for keywords within "Citation and Document Text" or "Document Text."
Refining Searches - Exercise
Click the Exercise link below to use advanced operators in solving a search problem.
Refining Searches - Exercise
Refining Searches - Exercise