Search

Search Terms

You can search our site by adding one or more words to one or more of the search boxes below.

Each box searches a different field and the 'Search All' box searches them all.

If you enter multiple words in in any search box then one of those words MUST be in that field for the product to be returned but all of them don’t have to be present.

The results will be ordered by products with more of the specified words first (if in “Relevance” order) then any products that have less of your specified words.

For example if you search for “Red Dog” in the title field and “James Ben” in the Author field then ether “Red” or “Dog” must be present in the title AND ether “James” or “Ben” must be present in the Author field for a product to be shown in the results. If both “Red” and “Dog” is present in the Title as well as “James” and “Ben” in the Author then that product will appear first in the results followed by any products with fewer of the optional words.

Wildcard Searches

We support single and multiple character wildcard searches within single words.

To perform a single character wildcard search use the ""?"" symbol.

To perform a multiple character wildcard search use the ""*"" symbol.

The single character wildcard search looks for terms that match that with the single character replaced. For example, to search for ""text"" or ""test"" you can use the search:

te?t

Multiple character wildcard searches looks for 0 or more characters. For example, to search for test, tests or tester, you can use the search:

test*

You can also use the wildcard searches in the middle of a term:

te*t

Warning: You should avoid using wildcard searches as the first character of a word as it will dramatically slow down searches:

?est

*st

Boolean Operators

Boolean operators allow terms to be combined through logic operators. We support AND, ""+"", OR, NOT and ""-"" as Boolean operators(Note: Boolean operators must be ALL CAPS).

The OR operator is the default conjunction operator. This means that if there is no Boolean operator between two terms, the OR operator is used. The OR operator links two terms and finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in a document. This is equivalent to a union using sets. The symbol || can be used in place of the word OR.

To search for documents that contain either ""another book"" or just ""another"" use the query:

""another book"" another

or

""another book"" OR another

AND

The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document. This is equivalent to an intersection using sets. The symbol && can be used in place of the word AND.

To search for documents that contain ""another book"" and ""Some Book"" use the query:

""another book"" AND ""Some Book""

+

The ""+"" or required operator requires that the term after the ""+"" symbol exist somewhere in a the field of a single document.

To search for documents that must contain ""another"" and may contain ""search"" use the query:

+another search

NOT

The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT. This is equivalent to a difference using sets. The symbol ! can be used in place of the word NOT.

To search for documents that contain ""another book"" but not ""Some Book"" use the query:

""another book"" NOT ""Some Book""

-

The ""-"" or prohibit operator excludes documents that contain the term after the ""-"" symbol.

To search for documents that contain ""another book"" but not ""Some Book"" use the query:

""another book"" -""Some Book""

Fuzzy Searches

We support fuzzy searches based on the Levenshtein Distance, or Edit Distance algorithm. To do a fuzzy search use the tilde, ""~"", symbol at the end of a Single word Term. For example to search for a term similar in spelling to ""roam"" use the fuzzy search:

roam~

This search will find terms like foam and roams.

An additional (optional) parameter can specify the required similarity. The value is between 0 and 1, with a value closer to 1 only terms with a higher similarity will be matched. For example:

roam~0.8

The default that is used if the parameter is not given is 0.5.

Grouping

We support using parentheses to group clauses to form sub queries. This can be very useful if you want to control the boolean logic for a query.

To search for either ""another"" or ""book"" and ""website"" use the query:

(another OR book) AND website

This eliminates any confusion and makes sure you that website must exist and either term another or book may exist.

Escaping Special Characters

We support escaping special characters that are part of the query syntax. The current list special characters are:

+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ "" ~ * ? : \

To escape these character use the \ before the character. For example to search for (1+1):2 use the query:

\(1\+1\)\:2

Boosting a Term

We provide the relevance level of matching documents based on the terms found. To boost a term use the caret, ""^"", symbol with a boost factor (a number) at the end of the term you are searching. The higher the boost factor, the more relevant the term will be.

Boosting allows you to control the relevance of a document by boosting its term. For example, if you are searching for

another book

and you want the term ""another"" to be more relevant boost it using the ^ symbol along with the boost factor next to the term. You would type:

another^4 book

This will make documents with the term another appear more relevant. You can also boost Phrase Terms as in the example:

""another book""^4 ""Some Book""

By default, the boost factor is 1. Although the boost factor must be positive, it can be less than 1 (e.g. 0.2)

Proximity Searches

We support finding words are a within a specific distance away. To do a proximity search use the tilde, ""~"", symbol at the end of a Phrase. For example to search for a ""book"" and ""another"" within 10 words of each other in a document use the search:

""another book""~10