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Search
Query Help
Making
Queries
Excite for Web Servers gives web users access to a sophisticated
concept-based searching engine. But even though the search engine
is advanced, users can form queries without using a complicated
query language. This page will help you to choose the queries
that will give you the best results.
Query
Basics
A query is simply a description of an information need. Unlike
Boolean systems that search for just those documents containing
all the words in your query, Excite for Web Servers will search
for documents that are a best match for the words in your query.
Excite for Web Servers will also search for documents that are
about the same concepts that your query describes, so sometimes
Excite for Web Servers will bring back articles that don't mention
any of the words in your original query.
What this
means is that your query — the description of your information
need — can be as detailed as you like. Don't worry about
providing too many words; the more words, the better. Additional
words in your query will help Excite for Web Servers figure out
what concepts you're really interested in. On the other hand,
Excite for Web Servers will do a pretty good job of figuring out
what documents are interesting to you even if your query is vague.
For example,
let's say you're searching a web site for documents about customer
support for the Widget2000 product you're using. A good starting
point would be
customer
support for the Widget2000
If you have
a question about a particular feature of the Widget2000, for example
the Blurfl upgrade package, you might choose a query like
customer
support for the Blurfl upgrade package
of the Widget2000
Even if there
are no documents that are actually about the Blurfl upgrade, Excite
for Web Servers will still show you documents about Widget2000
customer support.
Advanced
Query Tips
Here are some suggestions for getting the best results out of
Excite for Web Servers.
Only
use words that are relevant to your query
If you're
looking for documents about the Widget2000, don't enter a query
like "Find me all documents about the Widget2000".
Excite for Web Servers considers all the words in your query
to be part of your information need, so queries like the previous
example will find all documents about finding all documents
about the Widget2000, which may not be exactly what you
want.
Specify
multiple forms of the same phrases
Excite
for Web Servers distinguishes between hyphenated and un-hyphenated
words. So, sometimes it might be necessary to explicitly say
that you want both versions, for example "CDROM CD-ROM".
Excite for Web Servers will try to figure out that CDROM and
CD-ROM are the same, but it never hurts to explicitly specify
multiple forms.
Common
words are ignored
Excite
for Web Servers doesn't index common words like a, and,
or the. Consequently, those words in your query will
be ignored. Excite for Web Servers also ignores numbers; however,
it can find strings that happen to contain a number, for example
3Com.
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