Search Language in Online Systems

To search an electronic index or a Web database, you must enter one or more search terms.  When you enter more than one search word, the search software will conduct its search based on its own rules for handling multiple-word searches.  Knowing how the software will perform its search is important for constructing a search statement that retrieves what you would like to find.

An additional point you should consider before constructing a search is the amount of indexed terms in the database.  In library catalogs, most book records are quite brief, and you will need to match one of a few terms.  For these systems, entering only one to perhaps three terms will be most useful (the odds of a record matching an entire string of words is very low).  If you are searching full-text databases or web pages, however, a one- or two-word search will retrieve many more results with low precision.  For these systems, you should try to be as precise as possible, entering a number of words to refine your search statement.

Most software uses variations on one of two techniques: 

• Boolean searching

• Relevancy searching