Cyber411: index and search engine help

HOW IT WORKS

Cyber411 is a parallel meta-search engine. You can now search up to 16 of the most popular search engines at the same time by entering a query string just once. The query is reformulated to fit the syntax of each search engine and the results are gathered, duplicate URLs are removed and the results displayed as they are received from the engines.

FOREIGN LANGUAGE SUPPORT

Cyber411 now supports all languages within its normal search query.

SEARCH SYNTAX

Cyber411 now supports full Boolean search queries. You may now use the power of Boolean logic (AND, OR, NOT, etc.) to create more powerful queries to return more specific, targeted results. The table below describes the Boolean operators and how they function:

Keyword Description

" " Phrases are strings of words enclosed in quotation marks. For the purposes of searching, phrases are treated as a single word. A query for "search engine" returns document with the exact phrase search engine appearing in the text. The query search engine would instead return all documents containing both words but not necessarily together in that order.

AND Using AND to separate search terms returns documents containing both words or phrases. For example, sticks AND stones finds documents with both the word sticks and the word stones. If you do not specify any Boolean operator between words, AND is assumed. Thus, bread butter is equivalent to bread AND butter. For engines that do not support Boolean expressions but support +/- to include/exclude terms, the query would be reformatted to +bread +butter.

OR Using OR to separate search terms returns documents containing either of the words or phrases. For example, truth OR consequences finds any documents with the word truth or the word consequences. Some engines do not support mixed use of AND and OR in a single query. Cyber411 works around these limitations to give the best possible query in these cases.

NOT NOT is used to exclude a word or phrase from the search results. The query dinosaur AND NOT Barney tries to remove references to dinosaurs of the purple singing variety. Because the keyword AND is inferred, you could also use dinosaur NOT Barney. For engines using inclusion/exclusion rules this query converts to +dinosaur -Barney. Some engines do not support term exclusion at all. In these cases, the word or phrase is simply removed from the query.

NEAR NEAR is a keyword that few engines support. It is used to return documents that not only contain both terms but specifically documents where one term is within 10 to 25 words of the other (depending on the engine). AND will be substituted for the keyword NEAR for the engines that do not support it.

( ) Parenthesis may be used to construct a more complicated Boolean expression. For example, (cherry OR apple) NEAR (pie OR cobbler) AND recipe may provide just the right information for the person with a sweet tooth. You may nest parenthesis as much as you like to create as complicated of a query as you like. Just remember that very complicated queries are likely to provide a very limited set of results and will probably be of limited use on engines which have only basic query mechanisms.