Tips for Effective Searches

Tip 1 – Start with Narrow Searches

Adding a little focus to your initial query can drastically reduce the number of unwanted results. For example, if you are looking for news on the Space Shuttle Discovery, entering Discovery would return results about a lost city, a casino, and the Space Shuttle Discovery. Instead, entering Shuttle Discovery returns the items you want about the spacecraft Discovery. One extra search word can make a world of difference in your results.

Instead of...

Try...

Electronics

Consumer Electronics

Cars

Hybrid Cars

Elections

Election Results

Economy

Economic Forecast

Tip 2 – Search for Exact Names or Places

Surrounding a name or phrase with quotation marks returns search results containing that exact phrase, in the order that the words appear in the query. This is the quickest and easiest way to find exactly what you want.

If you are looking for stories concerning President Obama, entering president and obama not only returns stories about President Obama, but also about general presidential politics and Obama's children.

Entering "President Obama" narrows your search to only President of the USA, Barack Obama.

To ensure that you are finding all stories about the President, try:

"President Obama" OR "Barack H. Obama" OR "Mr. Obama"

If a title can be expressed in different ways, try searching all ways as shown in the search query above. It returns all items about President Obama.

Instead of...

Try...

New Jersey

"New Jersey" or "NJ"

Michelle Obama

"Michelle Obama" or "First Lady" or "Mrs. Obama"

IRS

"I.R.S." or "Internal Revenue Service"

Tip 3 – Search for Exact Names or Places in Metadata Fields

Searching through metadata fields is easy using simple or advanced searches.

If you are looking for financial stories about the Bond Market, enter the following query into the Search box:

category=F AND "Bond Market"
This query returns items with the exact phrase "Bond Market" from AP’s Financial news category.

Looking for items about the White House with Obama in the slug? Enter the following into the Search box:

"White House" AND slug=Obama
Only items containing "White House" anywhere and "Obama" in the slug are returned.

Tip 4 – Mix Wildcards, Operators and Exact Phrases

Use the * (asterisk), ? (question mark), Boolean operators and " " (quotation marks) to further narrow your searches:

doc* AND "Supreme Court"
This query returns items on Supreme Court Documentation, Supreme Court Dockets or Docking Supreme Court Hours.

all-star BEFORE NEAR(2) b*ball AND NOT ("NY Yankees" OR "NJ Nets")
This query returns items on baseball and basketball, but do not include items containing "NY Yankees" or "NJ Nets."

Search Tool Summary

To...

Do this...

Perform character matching

  • Use "?" to match one character.

Example: Pales???ian

  • Use "*" to match zero, one or more characters.

Example: book*

Find ALL terms

Use AND between terms.

Example: Syria AND Embassy

Find ANY terms

Use OR between terms.

Example: War OR Iraq OR Iran

IGNORE a term

Precede the term with NOT (at the beginning of the query) or AND NOT (in the middle of the query).

Examples: NOT France, Apples AND NOT Macintosh

Find an EXACT term

Surround terms with quotation marks "  ".

Example: "Rising Oil Prices"

Perform part of a query first

Use Parenthesis to show which action is done first.

Example: Apples AND NOT (Gala OR Fuji) – searches first for Fuji or Gala and excludes them from the search for all Apples.

Perform a metadata search

  • Use "=" to find matches with the specified criteria.

Example: headline=Olympics

  • Use "!=" to ignore matches with the specified criteria.

Example: slug!=Obama

Find items with matching metadata

Use HAS; same as "=".

Example: selector HAS nja*

Find items with terms in close proximity

  • Use BEFORE to find items with the first term appearing some number of words before the second term.

Example: Cat BEFORE(2) Hat

  • Use AFTER to find items with the first term appearing some number of words after the second term.

Example: Hat AFTER(2) Cat

  • Use NEAR to find items where the first term appears some number of words before or after the second term; you can also use the BEFORE and AFTER operators with NEAR.

Examples: Connecticut NEAR(3) budget, 2010 BEFORE NEAR(2) Olympics, Potatoes AFTER NEAR (4) Idaho

  • Use ADJ to find items with terms that are right next to each other.

Example: Frequent ADJ Flyer

  • Use BETWEEN to find items that match a metadata field range (for numerical metadata fields).

Example: Forest fires AND priority BETWEEN 1 - 3