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 behaviour.

1. Phrase search
   The search engine supports three types of phrase search.
   • To match an exact phrase, use quotation marks around the phrase
     Example: "French football clubs"
     This will find documents containing all three words adjacent to each other.
   • To match a near phrase (within a couple of words), use square brackets [around the words]
     Example: [French football sites]
     This will find documents containing all three words within a couple of words of each other.
   • To match a far phrase (within several words), use braces { around the words }
     Example: {French football sites}
     This will find documents containing all three words within several words of each other.
2. + and - qualifiers
   If you prepend a word with + that word is required to be present on the page.
   If you prepend a word with - that word is required to be absent from the page.
   Example: +always -never
3. * 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: nation*
   This will find: nation, nations, national, nationalism, nationalist, nationalists, nationalistic.
4. ? wildcard
   If a query word contains a ? any character will match that position.
   Example: b?g
   This will find: bag, beg, big, bog, bug.
5. Boolean search
   You can use the following Boolean operators in your search: AND, OR, NOT. These operators MUST be in capital letters.
   Example: (French AND English) OR (French AND Spanish)

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

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