Editing Encyclopedia:Search engine test (section)

===Search engine expressions (examples and tutorial)===
This section explains some [[Google Search#Search syntax|search expressions used in Google web search]].<ref>[http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py&#063;hl&#061;en&amp;answer&#061;136861 Google Search Operators and more search help]</ref> Similar approaches will work in many other search engines, and other Google searches, but always read their ''help'' pages for further information as search engines' capabilities and operation often differ. Note that if you are signed in to a Google account when searching on Google then this may affect the results that you get, based on your search history.<ref>[http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?hl=en&amp;answer=54048 Search history personalization]</ref> Also be sure to check "Languages for Displaying (Search) Results" in "Search Settings".<ref name=search>[http://support.google.com/websearch/bin/answer.py?answer=35892 Google Search Settings]</ref>)

The single most useful search engine tool may be the use of quotation marks to find an exact match for a phrase.  However, a search engine such as Google has both an easy, and an advanced search with further search options.  The advanced search makes it easier to enter advanced options, that may help your searching. The following collapsible sections cover basic examples and help for using search engines with Wikipedia.

Specialized search engines such as medical paper archives have their own specialized search structure not covered here.

{| class="collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%;text-align: left; border: 0px; margin-top: 0.2em;"
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! style="background-color: #f2dfce;" | Basic searches.
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| style="font-size:125%" | Most searches allow searching for words ({{kbd|acid}}), expressions ({{kbd|war on terrorism}}), and combinations ({{kbd|"war on terror" OR "war on terrorism"}}; {{kbd|John AND Smith}}), as well as excluding certain items ({{kbd|Bush NOT George}}). An expression is given in "double quote" marks, and expressions can be grouped with parentheses. Expressions are not usually case-sensitive. So the following are all valid texts to search for, on Google:

{| class="wikitable" width="90%"
| style="background-color: #cedff2;" | Search: {{kbd|John Smith}}
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| Since this isn't in quotes, Google looks for pages containing all of these terms. It finds all pages that contain "john" and "smith". This will return pages that contain "john smith", "john michael smith" but also pages that contain both terms separately, such as "The secretary, john arnold, and treasurer, mike smith..."
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| style="background-color: #cedff2;" | Search: {{kbd|"John Smith"}}
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| The name is in double quotes. Google will look for pages containing the exact expression "John smith", or the two words next to each other ("The author was John. Smith was the composer..."). But it won't pick up name variants such as "John M. Smith".
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| style="background-color: #cedff2;" | Search: {{kbd|"John Smith" OR "John M Smith" OR "John Michael Smith"}}
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| style="background-color: #cedff2;" | Search: {{kbd|"Ahmed Abu-Sayed" OR "Ahmed Abusayed"}}
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| Looks for pages with {{em|any}} of these expressions. Note the use of {{kbd|OR}} (which {{em|must}} be given in upper case) to find possible alternate spellings when it isn't clear whether or not words are joined by page authors.
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{| class="collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%;text-align: left; border: 0px; margin-top: 0.2em;"
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! style="background-color: #f2dfce;" | Use of {{kbd|NOT}}
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| style="font-size:125%" | The term {{kbd|NOT}} (in Google represented by {{kbd|-}}) means: exclude pages that contain this term. The danger is that pages will be excluded because of a term that actually has nothing to do with the search in hand. {{kbd|NOT}} always means "and also not" in Google. The best use of {{kbd|NOT}} (or {{kbd|-}} in Google) is in two circumstances:
# There is a clear expression or term and a page that contains that meaning probably will {{em|not}} be relevant to the meaning you are after.
# There are many references and you want to narrow down the search by excluding less likely page suggestions.

{| class="wikitable" width="90%"
| style="background-color: #cedff2;" | Search for a term with a 2nd meaning v1: {{kbd|George Bush NOT president}}
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| style="background-color: #cedff2;" | Search for a term with a 2nd meaning v2: {{kbd|"George Bush" NOT president}}
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| style="background-color: #cedff2;" | Search for a term with a 2nd meaning v3: {{kbd|George Bush NOT president NOT "White House"}}
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| You want references to George Bush, but not the one who's the president. Given that 90% of [[George Bush]] references will be about the US president, it makes sense to rule out all pages with that word, or even tighter, even though some pages may contain both references to non-presidential george bushes and the word president.

Two variations are shown; one looks for the expression {{kbd|"George Bush"}}, and one has a second exclusion to rule out pages with the term {{kbd|"[[White House]]"}}
|-
| style="background-color: #cedff2;" | Narrow down widely used terms: {{kbd|(flavor OR flavour) (quark OR quantum OR physics) -eat -food -drink -cooking -culinary}}
|-
| An example of a more complex search. The author is looking for the term {{kbd|flavor}}, in the sense of a property in [[quantum physics]]. Sources may spell it the [[General American|American]] way or [[British English|British]]/[[Commonwealth English|Commonwealth]] way, so the first expression is to look for one {{kbd|OR}} the other. Also the page must contain some other words likely to be related to subatomic physics, thus {{kbd|(quark OR quantum OR physics)}}. Last, pages containing references related to food and cooking are explicitly excluded, since most references to "flavor" will be of this kind.
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{| class="collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%;text-align: left; border: 0px; margin-top: 0.2em;"
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! style="background-color: #f2dfce;" | Advanced searches and copyvio checks.
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| style="font-size:125%" | Google allows all sorts of combinations of words, expressions, {{kbd|OR}}, {{kbd|NOT}}, and parentheses, which can be used to make quite detailed searches.

{| class="wikitable" width="90%"
| style="background-color: #cedff2;" | Search: {{kbd|linux (grub OR lilo) (boot OR startup OR "start-up") kernel init process}}
|-
| A person who wants to write an article on the [[Linux]] start-up (or boot) process, but doesn't know where on the net to look for reliable sources.

This search looks for pages that contain references to Linux, references to the two most common boot loaders with {{kbd|(grub OR lilo)}}, references to start-up under three common terms that might be used, and other words that hopefully will be commonly related to start-up in Linux.
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| style="background-color: #cedff2;" | Copyvio search: {{kbd|("zytox is the worlds leading producer of widgets" OR "merger with IBM in 1929" OR "exports radar components to over fifty countries") NOT Wikipedia NOT wiki}}
|-
| Looks for any of three memorable phrases from a suspected copyright violation, which do {{em|not}} appear on the same page as a reference to {{kbd|Wikipedia}}. Also excludes the term {{kbd|wiki}}, to weed out both a lot of [[WP:REUSE|Wikipedia mirrors]] but also other wikis, which are not the sorts of sites we're looking for.

If this text is copied from a website, a search like this will often help to locate the source.
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{| class="collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%;text-align: left; border: 0px; margin-top: 0.2em;"
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! style="background-color: #f2dfce;" | Finding vaguely remembered information and unfamiliar terms.
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| style="font-size:125%" | &nbsp;

{| class="wikitable" width="90%"
| style="background-color: #cedff2;" | Search for a vaguely known term: {{kbd|biology reproduction cell nucleus chromosome helix}}
|-
| A search for someone who wants to find what the molecule which reproduces is called ([[DNA]]) and knows some terms it might be associated with but can't remember the term itself. Use associated terms to try and find pages that mention it.
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| style="background-color: #cedff2;" | Search for a term with unknown spelling: {{kbd|piometra OR pieometra OR pyametra OR pymetra}}
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| A search for [[pyometra]] by someone who can't remember the spelling. Again, they could equally search using connected terms (Google: bitch womb spay open closed antibiotic – all terms associated with the veterinary condition pyometra). The odds are good someone else has already misspelt it like you did and it's been indexed, so you can look up more information from there.
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| style="background-color: #cedff2;" | Search for ambiguous terms: {{kbd|DNA}} (as in, the [[cell biology]] meaning)
|-
| An example of a problematic search. The obvious term {{kbd|DNA}} may pull up many unhelpful answers, such as companies with these initials. So it is likely that a person who wants to look up this item and doesn't know much already, will have to search like this:
# Search {{kbd|DNA}} – finding that it has many meanings.
# Search {{kbd|DNA cell biology helix}} – using words commonly associated with that meaning of DNA, to get pages covering that meaning.
# Using those pages to find the correct term is "deoxyribonucleic acid", sometimes written "deoxyribo-nucleic acid"
# Doing a final search for {{kbd|"Deoxyribonucleic acid" OR "Deoxyribo nucleic acid"}}
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| style="background-color: #cedff2;" | Search: {{kbd|("she's got" OR "she has") "do right by me" ticket ride lyrics}}
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| A search for a song title ("[[Ticket to Ride (song)|Ticket to Ride]]"), for a person who knows some phrases and {{em|thinks}} they might know others, including useful words that might help narrow it down.
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{| class="collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%;text-align: left; border: 0px; margin-top: 0.2em;"
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! style="background-color: #f2dfce;" | Searches restricted to news, newsgroups, and other sources.
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| style="font-size:125%" | &nbsp;

{| class="wikitable" width="90%"
| style="background-color: #cedff2;" | To search all news use [http://news.google.com/ Google News]
|-
| style="background-color: #cedff2;" | Search for a term within a certain site: {{kbd|"George Bush" site:www.bbc.com}}
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| style="background-color: #cedff2;" | Search for a term in a site's URL: {{kbd|allinurl:bbc George Bush}}
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| If searching using {{kbd|site:}} isn't enough, using {{kbd|allinurl:}} will specify that the search terms must appear in the page's URL itself, not just as a term on the page. This is mostly helpful for blogs and news sites that use blog-based [[Content management system|CMSes]] that use a lot of plain language in article URLs.
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{| class="collapsible collapsed" style="width:100%;text-align: left; border: 0px; margin-top: 0.2em;"
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! style="background-color: #f2dfce;" | Specialized options, including searches to include or exclude Wikipedia itself.
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| style="font-size:125%" | Google has options to specify web sites to search or not search, and where in the page to search. These are able to be added to the end of any search and will restrict the locations Google will report matches from. Examples of useful searches, using "(Atom OR Bomb)" as the example text being searched for:

{| class="wikitable" width="90%"
! To search like this
! Enter a search string like this
|-
| Only report pages from websites ending in "en.wikipedia.org", the English Wikipedia.
| {{kbd|(atom OR bomb) site:en.wikipedia.org}}
|-
| Only report pages from websites ending in "wikipedia.org", Wikipedia in any language
| {{kbd|(atom OR bomb) site:wikipedia.org}}
|-
| Only report pages from websites that do {{em|not}} end with "wikipedia.org", i.e. pages that are NOT on a Wikipedia website
| {{kbd|(atom OR bomb) -site:wikipedia.org}}
|-
| Avoid pages that mention {{kbd|Wikipedia}}.

<small>(This is a good way to avoid a deluge of results which are all either from Wikipedia, or from copies and mirrors of Wikipedia articles.)</small>
| {{kbd|(atom OR bomb) NOT Wikipedia NOT wiki}}
|-
| Find the phrase {{kbd|atom bomb}}, avoid pages that mention {{kbd|Wikipedia}} or {{kbd|wiki}} or are on {{kbd|Wikipedia.org}}, and {{em|link to}} the Google search that you performed, so that others can repeat it.

| <code><nowiki>[http://www.google.com/search?&q=%22atom+bomb%22+-wikipedia+-site%3Awikipedia.org "atom bomb" -Wikipedia -wiki -site:wikipedia.org]</nowiki></code>
|-
| Search for {{kbd|atom bomb}} on a specific list of sites.

| <code><nowiki>[http://www.google.com/search?q=%22atom+bomb%22+site%3Abritannica.com+OR+site%3Abbc.co.uk+OR+site%3Anytimes.com+OR+site%3Aguardian.co.uk+OR+site%3Asmh.com.au+OR+site%3Aamazon.com http://www.google.com/search?q="atom bomb" site:britannica.com OR site:bbc.co.uk OR site:nytimes.com OR site:guardian.co.uk OR site:smh.com.au OR site:amazon.com]</nowiki></code>
|-
| For the tennis player [[Facundo Argüello (tennis)|Facundo Argüello]] from (Spanish-speaking) Argentina, research how his name is spelled in reliable English sources. The search results should include articles with the word "tennis" but {{em|not}} the word "tenis" (the Spanish-language spelling), omit [[ISO 639-1|Spanish-language web sites prefixed with {{kbd|es}}]] ({{kbd|<nowiki>http://es.</nowiki>}} etc., like Spanish Wikipedia), omit web sites with the [[List of Internet top-level domains#Country code top-level domains|Argentine top-level domain name {{kbd|ar}}]], and omit pages that meantion {{kbd|Wikipedia}} or are on {{kbd|Wikipedia.org}}. It's possible to greatly simplify such a search by using the template {{tl|Google LC}} (though it does not auto-exclude the term {{kbd|wiki}}): <code><nowiki>{{subst:google LC|Facundo Argüello|es|ar}}</nowiki></code> displays as a clickable external link: {{google LC|Facundo Argüello|es|ar}} Simply click the template-generated link then add the positive and negative match terms {{kbd|tennis}} and {{kbd|-tenis -wiki}} to the search string and repeat the search. 

| <code><nowiki>[http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Facundo+Argüello%22+tennis+-tenis+-site%3Aes.*+-site%3A*.ar+-site%3Awikipedia.org+-Wikipedia+-wiki http://www.google.com/search?q="Facundo Argüello" tennis -tenis -site:es.* -site:*.ar -site:wikipedia.org -Wikipedia -wiki]</nowiki></code>
|-
| To research the preferred spelling of the soccer player [[Facundo Argüello (soccer)|Facundo Argüello]] from Argentina requires a much longer search string in order to eliminate a flood of results from his tennis namesake (see above): Simply click the link then add the positive and negative match terms {{kbd|soccer}}, {{kbd|football}}, {{kbd|-futbolista}} (and so on) to the search string and repeat the search. 

| <code><nowiki>[http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Facundo+Argüello%22+soccer+football+-futbolista+-tennis+-tenis+-ATP+-Wimbledon+-court+-site%3Aes.*+-site%3A*.ar+-site%3Awikipedia.org+-wikipedia http://www.google.com/search?q="Facundo Argüello" soccer football -futbolista -tennis -tenis -ATP -Wimbledon -court -site:es.* -site:*.ar -site:wikipedia.org -wikipedia]</nowiki></code>
|-
| Find pages which link to a particular page, such as Wikipedia's [[Main Page]]
|{{kbd|link:<nowiki>http:</nowiki>//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page}}
|-
| Specify that the expression must appear in the HTML {{tag|title|o}} of the page.
| {{kbd|allintitle: (atom OR bomb)}}
|-
| {{kbd|allintitle}} and {{kbd|site:}} (or {{kbd|-site:}}) can be {{em|combined}}, to find pages on a website (or not on the website) with the given expression in a title
| {{kbd|allintitle: (atom NOT bomb) site:en.wikipedia.org}}
|-
| Specify that the page's URL must contain a particular expression.
| {{kbd|inurl:(atom OR bomb)}}
|}

Site inclusion/exclusion is often very useful to get views either {{em|from}} a named website, or from {{em|any other}} websites. For example, it can be used
* To find pages on [[Microsoft]] terminology that are not self-published by Microsoft (not ending in {{kbd|microsoft.com}}),
* To find pages that are official US or UK government sources (end in {{kbd|.gov}} and {{kbd|.gov.uk}}, accordingly),
* To find sites from a given country (more likely to end with that country's initials, such as {{kbd|.fr}} for [[France]]),
* Or particular media publishers (e.g., {{kbd|cnn.com}} or {{kbd|bbc.co.uk}})

Specialized searches work on the same principles and same basic search expressions as the above, but might be used to check in specialized archives, or with unusual options.
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