Search help: Refining a search

Identify a phrase.

Before:	Bell Atlantic VPN
After:	"Bell Atlantic" VPN

The before query is ambiguous. Is it looking for documents that refer to Baby Bells in general or the Atlantic ocean? Identifying "Bell Atlantic" as a phrase eliminates the ambiguity. This is the most powerful query refinement technique.

Add a discriminating word or a phrase.

Before:	"Bell Atlantic" VPN
After:	"Bell Atlantic" VPN switches

As before, the before query is ambiguous. Adding switches makes the query less ambiguous. You'll get more total matches (because the query is broadened with an additional term), but the relevance ranking will be better.

Capitalize when appropriate.

Before:	wired digital white house, baby bells, bill gates
After:	Wired, Digital, White House, Baby Bells, Bill Gates

These examples, when all lower case, have a variety of possible interpretations. For example, without capitalization, wired could refer to electrical cables and not Wired Magazine. digital could refer to the opposite of analog or the former minicomputer vendor. Capitalization reduces the ambiguity. Be sure to place a comma between unrelated capitalized words, since the search engine treats adjacent capitalized words as if they formed a single phrase. It is always a good idea to capitalize proper names.

Use a require or reject operator (+,-).

Before:	Novell
After:	Novell, +DigitalMe -Microsoft

Novell alone is somewhat ambiguous. Lots of Network World articles mention Novell. You can use the reject operator (the "minus" sign) to narrow your search. Or, you can require that the word "DigitalMe" be in the document. The after version above does both.

Use a field specifier.

Before:	Sun workstation
After:	Sun workstation, title:Ultra

Network World and Network World Fusion articles have their headlines in the title field. If you are looking for a particular article for which you know the headline, use the title: field specifier. See Syntax for more information on this field specifier.