Ultraseek Search Syntax

Topics: phrases, proper names & capitalization | wildcard searches | pipes | field searches | more information


Phrases, Proper Names & Capitalization


Let's cover the simple stuff first. Say we're interested in the liver transplant program at UT Memphis. Querying the Memphis collection with just liver or transplant results in 1147 and 667 documents, respectively. Not all of these documents are relevant to liver transplanation, however. Querying with liver transplant results in 1686 documents. But again, not all of these documents are relevant. However, if we encase liver transplant with quotation marks (i.e., "liver transplant"), this tells the search engine to find documents where the two words are immediately juxtaposed. When we do this, only 46 documents are returned and they are all relevant.

What about names? The query john smith will return documents containing "John" or "Smith" or both. The query John Smith will return documents containing both "John" AND "Smith", but not any where just one or the other is found. The query "John Smith" will return documents where "John" and "Smith" are immediately juxtaposed. The bottom line here is that if you're searching for a proper name, be sure to capitalize its first letters and encase it in quotes.

If every letter in a query word is lower case, case is ignored as a criteria for the search. On the other hand, if any letter in a query is capitalized, the search engine will take note and only return those documents with words that have matching case. For example, consider these two queries: java versus Java. In the former case, both "java" and "JAVA" would be considered matches. In the latter, only "Java" would qualify.

Wildcard Searches


The Ultraseek search engine also supports searches utilizing the wildcard operators "*" and "?".

Say you enter in the query "Tenn*". In this case, the search engine will return documents containing terms such as "Tenn", "Tennessee", "Tennesseans", "TennesseeWeek" and "TennCare". Say you enter "*vols*". In this case, you'll get documents containing words like "ladyvols" and "volspace". In effect, appending the "*" operator to a character string tells the search engine that you're interested in any word starting with that string while preappending with "*" signals that you're interested in any word ending with that string. Using "*" on both ends indicates you're interested in words containing that string at any point along their length.

Say you enter "vol?". In this case, you'll get back "vols", "volk", "volt" and so forth--but you'll never get "volunteers". Why not? Because "?" is different from its cousin "*" in that it signals the search engine to return only those words larger by a single character.

Be aware that the search engine takes a longer time processing these sorts of queries--after all, it's like issuing a whole string of queries simultaneously.



Pipes


Pipes allow users to perform sophisticated and targeted searches with just one simple query. For instance, say you're interested in undergraduate research opportunities offered by the chemistry department at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. Without pipes, you'd be tempted to do two searches in tandem: one on chemistry followed by another one on "undergraduate research". Using a pipe, the same results can be achieved using a single query: chemistry | "undergraduate research". In effect, the pipe takes the results of the first search and "pipes" them to the second for further refinement. Any number of pipes can be used in a search.

When using a pipe in this manner, the resulting documents are ranked according to their relevance to both queries found on either side of the pipe symbol. If you would rather see the ranking implemented according to relevance to the query solely on the right-hand side of the symbol, use a double pipe ("||") instead of a single pipe ("|").

Field Searches


A "field search" is one in which the query not only specifies a word or words but also a context in which to search for these word(s). Here are some specific examples and their associated syntax:

  • Title searches

    Say you're only interested in documents with "Martin" in their titles. To execute such a search, you'd enter the following:

    title: Martin

    (The answer: 735 documents)


  • Site and URL searches

    Say you're interested in finding out how big the UTK home site is. To find out, just type in the following:

    site: www.utk.edu

    (The answer: 175 documents)


    Say you're interested in finding out how many pages are in the world-famous prime number site maintained by Dr. Chris Caldwell at UTM. To find out, just type in:

    url: www.utm.edu/research/primes

    (The answer: 1,006)


  • Link searches

    Say you want to know how many pages in UT web space link to the homepage maintained by the UT Memphis Center for the Health Sciences. Just type in the following:

    link: www.utmem.edu

    (Answer: 17,627)


  • Other field searches

    Other fields you can search include the following: alt, imagelink, description, keywords, doctype, and meta names.



More information


For more information, see the following: