The Internet is such a vast source of almost infinite information, it’s a wonder we can find anything at all. The search engine has become an invaluable resource to so many of us that browsing the Web without one is almost unthinkable.
Knowing how to use a search engine efficiently and effectively will help you quickly find the information you are looking for — on the mrc Web site and elsewhere on the Internet. This article contains information that will help you search the mrc Knowledge Base and Web site, as well as other popular search engines on the Internet, such as Google, to find the information you are looking for.
You can specify a number of attributes to your search criteria with these basic search options:
Case Sensitive: To perform a case sensitive search, you must capitalize the letters in your search and then select the "Case sensitive search" option below the search box.
English Stemming: This option allows you to search for documents that contain your search word or variations on that word. For example, a search on the word program with the English stemming option checked would return documents that contain program, programming, programs, programmed, etc.
SAME SENTENCE: Find documents with at least one sentence containing all the terms specified in the search string.
EXACT MATCH: This will look only for the exact words you’ve entered. A search for the words installation instruction returns only documents that contain both of those words, exactly as they are spelled.
FUZZY MATCH: This gives you a bit more leeway. My fuzzy search for installation instruction returned results that contain installation instructions as well. This is a nice feature if you aren’t sure of the exact spelling or usage of the words.
Additional Search Options
Boolean Operators: This allows you to specify certain restrictions, such as AND, OR, and AND NOT (which allows you to eliminate words that are not in the document, such as a search for instructions but not installation instructions; your search criteria would be instructions AND NOT installation).
Phrases: You can search for specific phrases embedded in a document by putting (double) quotation marks around the phrase, such as "green screen applications" instead of just green screen (which performs a search for green AND screen, by default).
Wildcards: You can use the asterisk (*) and questions mark (?) symbols as wildcards in your search. The "*" is a wildcard for any numbers of characters, and the "?" is a wildcard for just one character. For example, a search for repor* will return documents with any words that contain "repo", such as reporting, reports, etc. A search for repor? will return fewer results as it will only find report.
NOTE: You can also place a wildcard at the beginning of a sequence of letters. For instance, entering a query like *ded would list all documents containing such words as provided, needed, added, downloaded, etc.
Search in Results
Once you’ve received your search results, you may still be faced with a large number of documents. To obtain even more accurate results, you can apply any of the above search options — Boolean operators, wildcards, etc. — to your next search.
