Site Search           ( Formerly located on the Home Page of this site )   

Search Tips for FreeFind Site Search

By default the search engine tries to locate pages which have exact matches for  all  of the words entered in your search query. If that fails, it then tries to locate pages which contain  any  words in your search query. If that happens a short message is displayed at the top of the search results indicating this has been done.

In addition, there are several ways to modify the default search behavior.

• Phrase Search
• 
  The search engine supports three types of phrase search.
  • To match an exact phrase, use quotes around the phrase
    Example:  "free search engine"
  • 
    
  • To match a near (within a couple of words) phrase, use square brackets    [around the words]
    Example: [free search engine]
  • 
    
  • To match a far (within several words) phrase, use braces   {around the words}
    Example: {free search engine}
  • 
    

• + and - qualifiers
  If you prepend a word with + that word is required to be on the page.
  If you prepend a word with - that word is required to not be on the page.
  Example: +always    -never
• * wildcard
  If a query word ends with a * all words on a page which start the same way as that query word will match.
  Example: gift*
• ? wildcard
  If a query word contains a ? any character will match that position.
  Example: b?g

• Boolean search
  You can use the following boolean operators in your search:  AND,   OR,   NOT.   These operators MUST be in capital letters.
  Example:         (contact AND us)  OR  (about AND us)

All of these techniques can be combined:    +alway*     -ne??r*

For surnames which may be in the 'partial indexes' files  e.g   NORFOLK  or  BEDFORDSHIRE  etc, the FreeFind  search will identify the file, and reduce the chore of searching through these unsorted and incomplete surname lists.

Surnames which are ambiguous or uncertain may have been entered with a ? ending.       To find these, search for the surname but with the  *  (or ?) wildcard as the terminating character.

Avoid searches for single words which are likely to be very common in files on this site  e,g,   Census, St, Rd, 

Eceedingly common words such as   a, an, for, from, in, of, the, to   and so forth,   are not indexed by the FreeFind Spider  

Tuesday, February 01, 2005 12:58