Help:Searching
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In order to achieve the best results, there are three (3) primary ways in which to search Centiare's Directory listings and page articles:
- Centiare main search box
- External search engines (see also [[Centiare:Search Engine Optimization|SEO)
- Special "Search Triple" semantic search
Centiare main search box
Getting Started
To search Centiare, just type your keyword(s) in the searchbox and click:
- Go - (or Enter on keyboard) will take you automatically to a Directory listing and/or page article.
- Search - will return a list of Directory listings and/or page articles.
Tips & Tricks
Listed below are some good tips and hints for effectively using Centiare's main search facilities:
Avoid short and common words
If your search terms include a common "stop word" (such as "the", "one", "your", "more", "right", "while", "when", "who", "which", "such", "every", "about") it may give a large number of non-relevant results.
Wildcards
You can use some limited wildcards if you really want to. See Boolean fulltext search for details on their use. However, wildcard searches are slower, so go easy on the poor server.
Words with special characters
In a search for a word with a diaeresis, such as Sint Odiliënberg, it depends whether this ë is stored as one character or as "ë". In the first case one can simply search for Odilienberg (or Odiliënberg); in the second case it can only be found by searching for Odili, euml and/or nberg. This is actually a bug that should be fixed -- the entities should be folded into their raw character equivalents so all searches on them are equivalent. See also Centiare:Special characters.
Words in single quotes
If a word appears in an article with single quotes, you can only find it if you search for the word with quotes. Since this is rarely desirable, it is better to use double quotes in articles for which this problem does not arise. See the manual of style for more info.
An apostrophe is identical to a single quote, therefore the name Mu'ammar can be found only by searching for exactly that (and not otherwise). A word with 's is an exception in that it can be found also by searching for the word without the apostrophe and the s.
Namespaces searched by default
The search only applies to the namespaces selected in the user's preferences. To search the other namespaces check or uncheck the tickboxes in "Search in namespaces" box found at the bottom of a search results page. Depending on the browser, a box may still be checked from a previous search, but without being effective any longer! To make sure, uncheck and recheck it.
Searching the image namespace means searching the image descriptions, i.e. the first parts of the image description pages.
The source text is searched
The source text (what one sees in the edit box, also called wiki text) is searched. This distinction is relevant for piped links, for Centiare:interlanguage links (to find links to Chinese articles, search for zh, not for Zhongwen), special characters (if ê is coded as ê it is found searching for ecirc), etc.
Delay in updating the search index
For reasons of efficiency and priority, very recent changes are not always immediately taken into account in searches.
External search engines
Various search engines can provide domain-specific searches, which lets you search Centiare specifically. Searches are based on the text as shown by the browser, so wiki markup is irrelevant. Depending on your browser, you may also be able to use tools that allow you to search Centiare using bookmarklets.
In general, external search engines are faster than a Centiare search. However, because the search engine's cache is based on when the site was indexed, the search may not return newly created pages. Similarly, the search engine's cached version of the page will not be as up-to-date as the link to Centiare itself. Also, when returning Centiare articles in a regular search, mirrors and forks of Centiare content frequently rank higher than the actual Centiare articles because of search engine optimization techniques.
By following the links below, you can use the Google search engine to search Centiare:
If you frequently search via Google, consider installing the Google Toolbar. Using the "search this site" button allows you to quickly search the English version of Centiare. The official Google Toolbar is for Internet Explorer (Windows and Mac) and for Firefox (works on all operating system platforms for which Firefox is available, such as Windows, Linux and Mac OS X).
Yahoo!
By following the link below, you can use the Yahoo! search engine to search Centiare:
If you frequently search via Yahoo!, consider installing the Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. Using the "Search Only the Current Site" button allows you to quickly search the English version of Centiare. The official Yahoo! Companion Toolbar is only for Windows with Internet Explorer and Mozilla.
Special "Search Triple" semantic search
Centiare has incorporated semantic tagging extensions for all Directory listings that enables users to fine-tune searches based on relations and/or attributes. Utilizing these criteria, users can find and locate specific listings by industry, city/state/country, etc.
To see an example of a blank search form, just go here: SearchTriple. Perhaps a better way to access the SearchTriple form is from a link to an existing Directory listing that will pre-populate the form with different search criteria. Try Centiare itself; scroll to the bottom of the page to the 'factbox' and click on any of the magnifying glass icons.
This will redirect you to the SearchTriple form - just hit the search button and results will be displayed for the chosen selection criteria.
See also
- Help:Preferences, changing your search result settings
