Translated: require ISA, require backplane
- Finds "ISA Backplane",
"ISA backplane", and "backplane type ISA".
Does not find the lowercase "isa backplane", nor the
abbreviated "ISA bkpln".
Translated: forbid ISA, require backplane
- Finds "PCI backplane",
"Hollywood backplane", and lowercase "isa backplane".
Does not find "ISA definitions" nor "ISA backplane".
Translated: prefer ISA, require backplane
- Finds "ISA backplane",
"PCI backplane", and "PCI Backplane".
Documents with both terms appear higher in the list.
Translated: require the phrase ISA backplane"
- Finds "ISA backplane".
Does not find "CGI Backplane" nor "ISA type backplanes".
Translated: require isa (case insensitive), require words
starting with "backpl"
- Finds "ISA backplane",
"ISA backplanes", "ISA backplate".
The asterisk is a wildcard representing any four or fewer characters.
Translated: require Venus (case sensitive), require pictures,
forbid planet, prefer images
- First lists "pictures and
images of Venus", then "Venus pictures".
Does not list lowercase "venus picture", nor forbidden
"picture of planet Venus".
Translated: ignores common words like where, is, and the -
requires words containing "frog"
- Finds "frog", "frogleg",
and "bullfrog".
To suppress the ignore feature, use quotes, as in "Where
is the *frog*?".
Note on case sensitivity - only words or phrases containing an
upper case character will be treated as case sensitive.
A search on "usa" will match "Usa", "USA",
and "usA", while the term "USA" matches only
its uppercase version.
The asterisk is a powerful search tool, but has some limitations.
It cannot span words - that is, the query "powerful*search"
would not match the first sentence of this paragraph - and it
can represent at most four letters or numbers. To avoid overly
broad searches, the asterisk can only be used in words or phrases
which have at least three alpha-numeric characters.
A search for "th*" would be ignored.