how to use electricka's search
tool
You've probably used search tools similar to Electricka's Search Tool at
other web sites; if you have, you already know how to how to use most or all
of the features you will want to call on. But if you want or need details
about how to get the most from Electricka's tool, here they are.
Search Tool overview
Upon performing a search, Electricka's Search Tool finds and lists pages that contain
(are relevant to) the keywords you
specify.
- Search Tool presents a list information about the pages that are
relevant to your search.
The search results are automatically sorted by score. The highest score
represents the greatest keyword relevancy. The value of the score is a
special, private heuristic calculation performed by Electricka during the
search.
- For each relevant page on the list, the report shows the text for 100
of the words on the page that immediately precede and follow each
occurrence of the keyword or key phrases you specified before you searched.
Tip: It's easy to find the keyword or key phrases you specified for
your search; they're located in the middle of the report and highlighted
in red.
- At the bottom of the report for each relevant page, Search Tool reports
the number of terms on the page that matched your keyword or phrase, the
page's relevancy score, or the most recent page date, which ever you have
chosen.
- As described in the next section on How To Use The Search Tool, after
you see the relevancy report, you can change the report sort order to
"date."
The "date" list will be sorted with the most recent date first.
"Date" is either: 1) the date that Electricka or one of her muses
modified the page's contents to bring it up to date, or 2) the date that
Electricka or one of her muses automatically accessed the page to fulfill
a visitor's request, whichever is more recent.
"Date" could be the date on which you or another visitor recently
searched for the page or it could be a date that has nothing to do with
searching.
How To Use the Search Tool
- Type the keyword or keywords that express your area of interest in the
"Search for" box.
- To match a phrase, enclose it in quotation
marks, as in "Central America".
- For Boolean searching:
- To perform a Boolean OR search, select "any search words."
- To perform a Boolean AND search, select "all search words."
- To perform a Boolean NOT search, which will exclude pages that
contain a keyword from your search, precede a keyword by a "-"
character (minus or hyphen).
- Other Boolean operations are not supported.
- For Wildcard searching:
- Add a question mark to a keyword wherever you want a question
mark to result in a match with any corresponding character in a word
on a page. For example:
- A search for the keyword Arthur??? will find pages that
contain the word Arthurian.
- In this example, the three question marks at the end of the
keyword Arthur??? will cause the keyword to match occurrences
of the word Arthurian in pages that contain the word
Arthurian.
- Add an asterisk to a keyword wherever you want it to match any
number of any characters where it appears. For example:
- A search for the keyword *ick* will find pages that
contain the word Electricka or the word trick.
- In this example:
- The keyword *ick* will find pages that contain the word
Electricka because the first asterisk at the beginning of
*ick* will cause the characters Elecktr to match at the
beginning of *ick* and the last asterisk at the end of *ick*
will cause the letter a to match at the end of *ick*.
- The keyword *ick* will find pages that contain the word
trick because the first asterisk at the beginning of the
keyword *ick* will cause the letters tr to match the
word trick at the beginning of *ick* and the last
asterisk at the end of *ick* will cause any number of any
characters at the end of *ick* to match the key word, including no
characters. The keyword *ick* will also find pages that
contain the word trickster.
- To limit the scope of searching by category, select one or more Categories.
- Only pages that belong to categories you check are searched.
- You may choose (check) multiple categories for searching.
- The default All
produces a search of the entire web site.
- To limit the scope of searching by a date range, enter From/To dates.
Click the left arrows in each field to see calendars. The dates you
specify for pages are the most recent dates they were created or updated.
- To begin searching, click the SUBMIT button.
- The results of a search appear in the Search Tool browser window. You
can sort the results by document relevancy date; you can print the results page.
- Search results take the form of a list of pages at Electricka's web
site that contain the keyword or keywords you searched for.
- Each item on the list contains:
- The name of the page that contains the keyword.
- The keyword or keywords you searched for that appear on the page. The
keyword(s) are highlighted so you can identify them.
- The text on the page you searched for that immediately surrounds the keyword.
This text provides context.
- Read the text that immediately surrounds a keyword to get an idea of
the content and subject matter of the page.
- Revise the list's sort order by clicking either "relevance" or "date."
- If you decide to visit a page, click the title of the page. The page
will open in the Search Tool window.
- If the number of returns exceeds the size of the list, multiple pages
will be returned. Either: 1) used the Results Pages command at the bottom
of the list page to advance to or return from additional pages, or 2)
enter a new value in the Results per page box at the top of the page and
repeat the search.
- You have the option to use your browser print the list.
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—tip— getting the most from
Electricka's search tool
Electricka offers a list of tips for getting the most from your
searches.
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sophisticated searching
Doing serious research? You may want to compose a sophisticated key word
search.
- Find helpful suggestions at Electricka's page titled Search Tool Help:
click here.
More about Electricka's search
tool
For complete instructions on how to search with key words at Electricka's
web site, consult the write-up on
Electricka's Search Tool. You'll find it in Electricka's
Guide To Navigation at the page called Guide To Navigation—Search Tool.
These searching guidelines range from very simple, for the beginner, to
complex for the expert.
- Visit Electricka's
Guide To Navigation—Search Tool now:
click here.
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