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At its simplest, a query can be just a word or a phrase. But with the tips on this page, you can expand the focus of your query to give you more complete results. These tips will get you started with basic query language and acquaint you with the full power of the search system.

• Look for words with the same prefix. For example, in your query form type key* to find key, keying, keyhole, keyboard, and so on.

• Search for all forms of a word. For example, in the form type sink** to find sink, sinking, sank, and sunk.

• Search with the keyword NEAR, rather than AND, for words close to each other. For example, both of these queries, ngo and development and ngo near development, look for the words ngo and development on the same page. But with NEAR, the returned pages are ranked in order of proximity: The closer together the words are, the higher the rank of that page.

• Refine your queries with the AND NOT keywords to exclude certain text from your search. For example, if you want to find all instances of surfing but not the Net, write the following query:

  surfing AND NOT the Net

• Add the OR keyword to find all instances of either one word or another, for example:

  Abbott OR Costello

  This query finds all pages that mention Abbott or Costello or both.

Put quotation marks around keywords if you want the search system to take them literally. For instance, if you type the following query:

"ngo near development"

Index Server will literally look for the complete phrase ngo near development. But if you type the same query without the quotation marks:

ngo near development

the system searches all documents for the words ngo and development.

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