Advanced Search Guide
When using WebSearch, like most search engines, you can search using individual keywords, or phrases. Search keywords can be entered on their own or as part of a sentence, such as:
rugby
rugby cup
rugby world cup
This will return search results which match any placement of the keyword(s) you have provided. This will always return the highest number of results but they may be more general in their quality.
To search for a phrase, simply enclose the phrase in double quotes, such as:
"rugby world cup"
Enclosing your search phrase in quotes will improve your results for that particular phrase considerably. This will always return a lower number of results, which will always be more specific in their quality.
If you are searching for something but don't know the exact wording of a phrase, you can use a wildcard ( * ), such as:
"rugby * cup"
this will return any matched phrase matching, such as:
"rugby club cup", "rugby world cup", rugby trophy cup" and so on.
WebSearch also supports complex boolean searching.
Boolean searches are search requests which are defined using logical expressions. Expression can be composed using AND and OR operators. Subexpressions can also be grouped simply by using parenthesis, such as:
(rugby OR football) AND (world OR cup OR competition)
Any subexpression enclosed within parenthesis can be yet another boolean logical expression, or can be any word(s), pattern(s), or even phrase(s).
You can exclude as many words as you like, simply by adding more exclusions as you want, such as:
rugby world cup -sydney
rugby world cup -sydney -ticket -prices
Websearch also supports the use of wildcard searching, where you may want to get search results for a general range of related topic results. You can do this using the single character wildcard "?" or the multiple character wildcard "*" such as:
book?
This would return results containing the likes of "books", "book1", "book5", "book!" and so on.
travel*
This would return results containing "travel", "traveler", "traveling", "traveled" and so on.
WebSearch also allows you to limit search results to a particular site, or sites which might be of interest, such as:
rugby site: www.rugby2003.com.au
This would return search results only from the "www.rugby2003.com.au" web site, exclusively.
You can also find results from a general site or domain by using a more generic site: command such as:
rugby site: net.au
This would return search results only from sites which have "net.au" in their domain name, such as "myisp.net.au" or "bigsite.net.au" and so on.
As with keywords and phrases, you can also use the site: command to exclude results from your search results, such as:
rugby -site: www.nrl.com.au
You can use the site: command multiple times in the same search, such as:
rugby site: nrl.com.au site: rugby2003.com.au
Similarly, you can use multiple site: commands for exclusion, such as:
rugby -site: nrl.com.au -site: rugby2003.com.au
Several site: limits can be used together.
WebSearch also supports link searching. This allows you to search for all pages or sites which link to a specific page, such as:
link: http://www.websearch.com.au/
link: http://www.murdoch.edu.au/search/
Be sure to use the "full" url, including the http:// at the front, and the / at the end.
This will return search results for pages which link to the desired site only.
I hope this search guide provides you with a good feel for the full power of the latest version of WebSearch, which has been designed to make it even more possible for users to fine tune their search requests and more easily find the exact page or pages or topics you were looking for.
As always, I love feedback, so if you find a quirky use, or some surprising unexpected result from the use of advanced searching, please to share it with me as I'm always interested in hearing how users might have managed to push WebSearch just that little bit further that I might have expected.
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