Searching with Eureka
Eureka works very similar to classic general
purpose search engines.
1. The basics of Eureka Search
To enter a query into Eureka, just type in a few descriptive words and hit the
'enter' key (or click on the Search button) for a list of relevant web pages.
Since by default Eureka only returns web pages that contain
all the words in your query, refining or narrowing your search is
as simple as adding more words to the search terms you have already
entered. Your new query will return a smaller subset of the pages Euręka
found for your original "too-broad" query.
Boolean and proximity operators
can create a more precise query.
| To Search For
|
Example |
Results |
| Both terms in the
same page |
access and
basic
-or-
access & basic |
Pages with both the words
“access” and “basic” |
| Either term in a
page |
plant or
term
-or-
plant | term |
Pages with the
words “plant” or “term” |
| The first term
without the second term |
access and not
basic
-or-
access & ! basic |
Pages with the word
“access” but not “basic” |
| Both terms in the
same page, close together |
european near
community
-or-
european ~ community |
Pages with the word
“excel” near the word “project”
|
You can add parentheses to nest expressions within a query. The
expressions in parentheses are evaluated before the rest of the query.
Use double quotes (“) to indicate that a Boolean or
NEAR operator keyword should be ignored in your query.
For example, “Abbott and Costello” will match pages with the phrase, not
pages that match the Boolean expression. In addition to being an
operator, the word and is a noise word in
English.
Wildcard operators help you find database files containing
words similar to a given word.
Additional information:
Searches produce a list of files that contain the word or phrase no
matter where they appear in the text. This list gives the rules for
formulating queries:
- Consecutive words are treated as a phrase; they must appear in the
same order within a matching document.
- Queries are case-insensitive, so you can type your query in
uppercase or lowercase.
- You can search for any word except for those in the exception list
(for English, this includes a, an, and,
as, and other common words), which are ignored during a search.
- Words in the exception list are treated as placeholders in phrase
and proximity queries. For example, if you searched for “Word for
Windows”, the results could give you “Word for Windows” and “Word and
Windows”, because for is a noise word and appears in the
exception list.
- Punctuation marks such as the period (.), colon (:), semicolon (;),
and comma (,) are ignored during a search.
- To use specially treated characters such as &, |, ^, #, @, $, (,
), in a query, enclose your query in quotation marks (“).
- To search for a word or phrase containing quotation marks, enclose
the entire phrase in quotation marks and then double the quotation marks
around the word or words you want to surround with quotes. For example,
“World-Wide Web or ““Web””” searches for World-Wide Web or
“Web”.
2. Categories
Enter plant name and Eureka will show up all sites where you can
find descriptions or translations for plant names.
To restrict a search to a specific category of sites you would
select a Eureka "category". To do so, click on the "Select categories"
button and choose the wanted category.
3. Languages
Choose a language from the selection box to find sites for that
language only.
4. Advanced options
On top right of the search box you have two buttons: "Simple" and
"Advanced". Click on the Advanced button and Eureka will
propose further search options. First, it is possible to
search in titles or for urls. Secondly, you can specify two
languages which is perfect for locating bilingual glossaries or
dictionaries. Finally, a date filter instructs Eureka to return only those
entries added to the database during the last days or weeks.
Please send your comments to eureka@foreignword.com
