Getting the most out of searches

For the advanced search and regular search, we recently modified the search mechanism. Everything looks the same, but the search is much more powerful now.

Much of the new functionality attempts to match the way Google works.

1) The searching has been made more restrictive. Previously, searches were set up as boolean OR searches. This meant that a result would be returned even if only word matched, resulting in many results. Now, all words must match for a result to be returned. This allows for much more specific searching.

2) Search operators. Now if I want to look for Honda cars, but not the Accord, I can type "Honda cars -Accord". The minus operator means to exclude a certain search term. Likewise, if I want to search for one word or another, I can type "accord OR camry". .

2) Phrase searches. You can now search for phrases, and matches will include everything within the quotes in the specific order that you supplied them. For instance, if you have a task which says "Please pick up eggs and milk from the grocery store", the following search query will match:

> milk eggs grocery

But this will not:

> "milk and eggs" grocery

For more information about tips and tricks you can use on our search engine, please check out Google's notes here:

https://www.google.com/intl/en/help/basics.html

All of Google's features apply to our search (except for their proprietary "I'm Feeling Lucky" feature).