Help on Making Queries

Excite for Web Servers gives you access to a sophisticated concept-based searching engine. But even though the search engine is advanced, you can form queries without using a complicated query language. This page will help you to choose the queries that will give you the best results.

Query Basics

A query is simply a description of an information need. Unlike Boolean systems that search for just those documents containing all the words in your query, Excite for Web Servers will search for documents that are a best match for the words in your query. Excite for Web Servers will also search for documents that are about the same concepts that your query describes, so sometimes Excite for Web Servers will bring back articles that don't mention any of the words in your original query.

What this means is that your query -- the description of your information need -- can be as detailed as you like. Don't worry about providing too many words; the more words, the better. Additional words in your query will help Excite for Web Servers figure out what concepts you're really interested in. On the other hand, Excite for Web Servers will do a pretty good job of figuring out what documents are interesting to you even if your query is vague.

For example, let's say you're searching a web site for documents about customer support for the Widget2000 product you're using. A good starting point would be 

        customer support for the Widget2000
If you have a question about a particular feature of the Widget2000, for example the Blurfl upgrade package, you might choose a query like 

        customer support for the Blurfl upgrade package
        of the Widget2000
Even if there are no documents that are actually about the Blurfl upgrade, Excite for Web Servers will still show you documents about Widget2000 customer support.

Can't Find What You Are Searching For?

If you get too many results which do not seem relevant to what you are looking for then try to make your query more specific. So if you were looking for a page about semester dates then do not search only on semester but instead search on semester dates.

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Webmaster@lboro.ac.uk, July 1996, revised May 1999. 
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