Search syntax in the keywords field

The following symbols are recognised and used in the keywords field:

• Exclude
  - word or -  “phrase words”
  A ‘-’ symbol before a word or a phrase will mean that search results must NOT include this word or phrase.

• Prioritise within
  #word or #“phrase words”
  A ‘#’ symbol before a word or a phrase will prioritise matches which contain the word or phrase. Multiple different #words and #phrases can be included. # will not affect the volume of results at all – only the ordering. The impact of #prioritisation is only seen when the result ordering is set to relevance.

• Exact phrase
  “phrase words”
  Quotation marks identify a group of two or more words to be searched as a phrase. This will search as an ‘exact phrase’ (i.e. a phrase flex of 0) – but will still search the individual words as stemmed words.

• Phrase flex
  “phrase words”~3
  After a phrase, a ‘~’ symbol followed be a number will define the phrase flex parameter to be applied to this phrase.

• Wildcard
  Wildc* or wildc?rd
  A * will act as a wildcard for any number of characters. A ? will act as a wildcard for a single character. Wildcards will not work within phrases, or in the names field.

Note: All of these symbols are interchangeable with the advanced search form. If you enter search parameters in the advanced search form, they will be represented in the keywords field with these syntax symbols. And if you write these symbols directly into the keywords field, they will be transferred into the advanced search form, if you use it.

Syntax or symbols that are not valid

The following symbols and syntax are not valid and will be ignored:

• +word
  There is no ‘+’ symbol recognised – as the default for any word or phrase is ‘must include’. - (exclude) and # (prioritise within) are the only symbols recognised before a word or phrase.

• ‘single quotes’
  Single quote marks will not mark a phrase. They will be ignored.

• “word”
  Putting a single word in double quotes will have no effect – a phrase must have two or more separate words.

• [word] (word)
  No syntax is built on [] – they will be treated as punctuation characters (and largely ignored).

• AND, OR
  no boolean operators in word form are recognised. These will be treated as ‘stop words’ and ignored.