how to use electricka's search tool

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.

—tip— getting the most from Electricka's search tool Electricka offers a list of tips for getting the most from your searches. Scan Electricka's list of search tips now: click here.

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.