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Simple Search
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Adv. Features
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Simple Search
Starting a Search
Type a word or phrase and click the "Search" button or press the Enter
key. Searches for single words or simple phrases may match our Key Site
feature, pointing out the primary site for information on that term. If you
are searching for a phrase, remember that the order of words in the phrase
is important.
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Example: Java (simple one word search)
Example: Power Macintosh (one phrase, no commas needed)
Example: Mac OS upgrade (one phrase, order is important)
Adding search terms
To make your results more specific, use multiple search terms, separated by commas.
Each search term may be a single word or a phrase.
The commas tell the search engine "Find as many of these terms as possible, in any order."
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Example: QuickTime, download, update (three words, any order)
Example: upgrade, Mac OS (a word and a phrase)
Example: Power Macintosh, edit video, Avid Cinema (three phrases)
Capital letters
Capital letters do not change your results because simple searches are
not case-sensitive. "WebObjects" and "webobjects" get the
same search results. If case sensitivity is required, use our advanced
features.
Stemming
Our search engine uses stemming to automatically include related variations of
your search term. If you search for update, you will also
find "updated", "updates", "updating" and so on. Every word in a search
phrase is stemmed unless quotation marks are used.
Quotation Marks
Use quotation marks around your search terms to find exact matches.
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Example: Announce (matches announcement, announcing, and announced)
Example: "Announce" (matches only announce)
Asterisk (*) and Question Mark (?)
Use asterisks and question marks when you don't know the exact spelling
of a word or want to match many words which begin the same. Question mark replaces
a single unknown character.
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Example: Macintosh II?? (matches Macintosh IIci, IIsi, IIfx, but not IIx)
Asterisk matches multiple unknown characters and can broaden your
search. Remember that stemming (described above) may help to broaden
searches for common words. If you are looking for an even broader range
of words, asterisk will find words which are unrelated but start
the same. (cat* matches cat, cats, catapult, and catch)
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Example: Power Macintosh 81* (matches 8150, and 8100/110AV)
And, Or, Not
Use "or" to broaden your search. Use "and" and "not" to narrow your search.
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Example: Education or School (matches either search term)
Example: eMate and Rebate (match must include both terms)
Example: LaserWriter not StyleWriter (match first term, exclude second term)
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On this page
Simple Search
Results
Adv. Features
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Results
Key Sites
The first section of the results page is reserved for a Key Site
match, if one is found. Search terms in our list of common Apple
topics will result in a Key Site match. For example, a search for
QuickTime will display a link to the Key Site for
QuickTime, like this:
Key Site:
QuickTime <http://quicktime.apple.com/>
This site appears to be the closest match to your search request. Full search results are listed below.
Full Search Results
Below the Key Site result (if one was found), you will also see
the full search results. Search results are shown as a list
of documents ranked from those that match your search terms the
most to those that match the least. Here is one result entry
for a search for online, technical support:
- 1.
  Apple:
Technical Support Online - Apple: Technical Support Online
. Desktop Computers .Apple Displays .Performa Products .Mac OS &
Applications .Portable Computers .Printers & Imaging .eMate/MessagePad .Servers & Networking. .... ... -- > Welcome
to technical Support Online To get started now click on the blue
product links above.. For full details please read below. What
Technical Support ...
http://support.info.apple.com/tso/tso-home.html
This results display begins with the match number and a bar graph
indicating the strength of the match. (Lower numbers and darker
bars indicate better matches.) The next item in the display is the
title of the document which links directly to the web page you have
found. Next is a summary paragraph of text drawn from the first 100
words of the document. Finally, there is a second link to the
document showing its full URL, for your future reference.
"Duplicates may have been removed"
The statement "Duplicates may have been removed" appears at the
beginning of the search results. You may notice that the numbered
items in your results list skip some numbers, because duplicate
results have been deleted. These duplicates reflect Apple's use of
redundant servers to serve our web sites.
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On this page
Simple Search
Results
Adv. Features
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Advanced Features
Advanced search features allow much more specific queries by
using additional search operators and parentheses to more precisely
describe your search request. Queries using advanced structure
and operators usually produce more precise results, but may take
longer to complete than a simple search.
Operators
Commands in the search language are called operators. The operators
describe how the search terms must be related to match your request.
In simple search tips above, we introduced the operators
<AND>, <OR>, and <NOT>. Additional operators and
their definitions are introduced starting with <ACCRUE> below.
Syntax
Most searches involve only one or two search terms, and use the
structure "Searchterm <OPERATOR> Searchterm". As you add more
terms, you may want to take advantage of an alternate structure or
syntax. For very long search requests, the alternate syntax
"<OPERATOR> (searchterm1, searchterm2, searchtermN)" requires
less typing.
- Example: employment <OR> jobs (good for short queries)
- Example: <OR> (employment, jobs, career, internship) (many terms)
Punctuation and capitalization of operators
Formally, operators in the search language appear in capital
letters, surrounded by brackets. In common usage, you can use
upper, lower or mixed case for search operators. A few very common
operators can even appear without brackets. <AND>, <OR>
and <NOT> are the three most common operators which can be
written with or without brackets. See the Simple
Search tips for examples of informal punctuation.
Parentheses
In searches where multiple operators are needed, you can group your
search terms using parentheses. Parentheses clarify the relations
among the search terms so the search engine will be able to
interpret how to answer your search request properly. For example,
you can use parentheses plus <OR> to group words which have
similar meaning into one search term before using <AND> or
<NOT> to include or exclude the entire group.
- Example: Rhapsody <AND> (programming <OR> developing)
- Example: (Mac OS <OR> system software) <AND> download
- Example: Mac OS <NOT> (update <OR> download)
<ACCRUE>
In the simple search tips, we introduced the idea of using a comma
to separate search terms. Actually, a comma is an informal version
of the <ACCRUE> operator. As we explained above,
<ACCRUE> tells the search engine "Find as many of these terms
as possible, in any order." More precisely, <ACCRUE> looks
for documents where the search terms appear frequently (density) and
close together (proximity). If the terms appear in great density and
proximity in a document, the search engine assigns a
higher match score to the document . <ACCRUE> can be written
out fully as an operator, or written informally as a comma ",".
- Example: Rhapsody <ACCRUE> developing) (two terms, any order)
- Example: Mac OS, update, download (three terms, comma is an operator)
Proximity Searching
Proximity operators make the search engine assign a higher score to
documents in which the search terms appear close together or within
a specific portion in a document. The operators for proximity
searching are <NEAR>, <PHRASE>, <SENTENCE> and
<PARAGRAPH>.
The <NEAR> operator uses the number of words
between multiple search terms to score documents -- the closer they
are together, the higher the document scores. The <NEAR>
operator is better than the <AND> operator at finding documents
in which your search terms normally appear close together.
- Example: publish <NEAR> multimedia
- Example: (publish <OR> author) <NEAR> multimedia
In proximity searches, the order of the search terms doesn't matter
and, as usual, all search terms will be stemmed, so that in the
search above, the term "publish" will match "publishing"
"publisher", and so on. The <PHRASE> <SENTENCE>
and <PARAGRAPH> operators find documents in which the search
terms appear within the same portion of a document -- a phrase,
sentence or paragraph.
Case Sensitive Searches
The <CASE> operator makes search terms case sensitive. Use
parentheses to surround all the search terms you want to modify with
the <CASE> operator:
- Example: <CASE> (System Software)
- Example: publish <NEAR> <CASE> (HTML <AND> QuickTime)
HTML Zone Searching
You can restrict your search to any named HTML zone, such as
<TITLE> or <H1> with the <IN> operator. HTML zones
are defined by pairs of HTML tags, as in: <TITLE>This
is the Title Zone</TITLE>
- Example: (encryption <OR> security) <IN> title
- Example: (new <NEAR> products) <IN> H1
Finding Links
Finally, you can search the links in documents for specific terms
using the <CONTAINS> operator and the HREFS field extracted
from each document. To find out which documents point to Apple's
QuickTime Web site:
- Example: HREFS <CONTAINS> quicktime.apple.com
Now try it yourself
Use the "Find It" button on any navigation bar to get to our search interface to
try these search techniques.
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