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Tips for Searching
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Overview
WillowNet searches fall into the following categories:
- Products by Titles and Descriptions
- Products by ServiceBuilder Topics
- Products by Authors / Artists / Speakers
- Products by Seeds ID
- Products by Inventory ID
- News by Content and Authors
In News searches, the titles, bodies, and bylines of all articles are searched.
You can specify only one of these categories at a time by using the dropdown
list. If you do not select anything from this list, the default is for the engine
to search for Products by Titles and Descriptions.
Case Sensitivity
Searches are not case-sensitive. Searches for "Evangelism" and "evangelism" and "EVANgelism"
will all return the same results.
Phrases
Searches of more than one word will be treated as a search for a phrase.
Quotation marks are not needed to indicate a phrase. If you
enter "freedom notebook popsicle" (without the quotation marks), the search engine will look for exactly that
phrase. If you want to search for items that have the words "freedom", "notebook",
and "popsicle" in them, but not necessarily as a phrase, you can use a Boolean "or" search, as
discussed below.
Excluded Search Terms
To increase the efficiency of the search process, common words (such as "the",
"he", "she", etc.) when searched for by themselves are filtered out and will
not be searched for. You may view the stopword
list to see all such words. However, these common words, when used in conjunction
with other search terms or Boolean operators, are perfectly valid. For example, a
search for "and" will be rejected, but a search for "this and that" will be
processed.
Boolean Searching
The following Boolean operators will work in a search:
and - A search for "flower and mudflap" will return results with
both "flower" and "mudflap" in them.
or - A search for "flower or mudflap" will return results with
either "flower" or "mudflap" in them.
and not - A search for "flower and not mudflap" will return results
with "flower" but not with "mudflap" in them.
* - Searches will interpret the asterisk as a wildcard character.
Further Considerations
Please note that in a search such as "soggy squash or fried green tomatoes",
"soggy squash" and "fried green tomatoes" will be treated
as phrases. Therefore, this search will return results with either "soggy squash" or
"fried green tomatoes" in them, but it will not return results that have only
"fried" or "squash" in them.
You may enter as many instances of an operator as you like. For example,
a search for "Bill and Ted and paper and wind" is fine.
You are not allowed to mix operators. For instance, "Bill and Ted or Martha" is
not a valid search. An entry like this will produce results, but their validity
cannot be assured.
Wildcards may be used at only the beginning or the end of a search entry. For
example, "flow*" and "*flap" are valid searches, but "fl*p" is not.
Additionally, "flower mud*" and "*wer mudflap" are acceptable searches, but
"flower *flap" is not.
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