Understanding Content-Based Searches

Most Searches look for Index Field data to return results. The Content Search optional component provides a deeper level of business intelligence by looking within the text-based documents in your database for keywords or phrases. Each document found is further weighed for relevance by the number of times the keywords (“hits’) are located. The hits are highlighting in the Document Viewer, so that you can navigate from hit to hit in a document image.

Content-based Searches are run in the same way as other Searches, with the addition of the Keyword text box, where you enter words or phrases to search for within the document’s text. You can create simple word searches or more complex queries using tools for logical operator concatenated (look for this and that, look for this or for that), phrase-based searching, and proximity searching.

Like Multi-Field Searches, content-based Searches can use the AND or the OR logical operator.

Name	Character or Symbol	Description	Example
Wildcard	*	Represents any number of characters from 0 to unlimited and can be placed anywhere within the search value.	ware, tech, *work, reability**, will return all instances of the search value preceded, or followed (depending on the placement of the wildcard) by any other characters)
Wildcard	?	Represents one and only one character and can be placed anywhere within the search value.	?ean, D??n, Be?n?, will return all instances of the search value where the question mark (?) is replaced by any single character
Wildcard	=	Represents one and only one digit and can be placed anywhere within the search value. The return will be all instances of the search value where the = is replaced by a single digit.	N=== will return N123 but not N1234 or Nabc
Fuzzy	%	Represents “Degree of wrongness” and can be placed anywhere within the search value. Using the symbol that represents a fuzzy degree(s) allows you to search for up to a specified number of things wrong with a word.	%%like will return wide because there are two things different, or wrong, between wide and like.) Positioning the % as follows: li%%ke, will keep the L and the I in the same position and search for words where there are up to two things wrong after that point (e.g., line, lion, liked). The search will use only up to ½ the number of characters in the search word with a maximum of nine (10) fuzzy degrees.
Phonic	#	A “sounds like” search and can be placed at beginning of a search term. To search for words that sound like your search value, use the # sign at the beginning of your word.	#rain would find rain (or a cloud), but also rein (of a horse) and reign (of a king)
Stemming	~	A “form of the word” search must can be placed at end of a word for which you are searching. Stemming understands the meaning of the root word and returns grammatical variations.	apply~ will return applied, applying, applies
Logical	AND	Use operators like AND, OR, or NOT to join words and phrases. The order of operator precedence is OR, W/--, AND. logical operators are not case sensitive. Use the AND operator between two search values when you can search for both values, at the same time.	Education AND Director will return all instances of the search value which contain both “Education” and “Director”
Logical	OR	Use OR operator between two search values when you are searching for either one value or the other.	Education OR Training will return all instances of the search value which contain either “Education” or “Director” or both
Logical	NOT	Add NOT in front of any search expression to reverse its meaning to exclude documents from the search.	apple OR NOT pear
Parenthetical Control	( )	Use parentheses around terms to control order of operation.	due process of law and not (equal protection or civil rights)
Proximity	w/#	Use to search for a character, word, or phrase within so many words, before or after, of another. Use two words within # of each other or use between search terms.	Manage w/5 department acts as an AND that forces the terms to be within five words of each other – the order doesn’t matter
Proximity	pre/#	Use pre-proximity searching to force an order of results.	manage pre/5 department must find manage within five words before department
Proximity	NOT w/#	Unlike W/, the operator NOT w/ is not symmetrical.	apple not w/20 pear searches for apple and excludes cases where apple is too close to pear, but pear not w/20 apple searches for pear and excludes cases where pear is too close to apple
Proximity	NOT pre/#	The NOT pre/ operator forces on order of results, like pre/, and searches for results which are not the value, like NOT w/.	manage NOT pre/5 department must find values which are not manage within five words before department
Numeric Range	#~~#	Search for a range of numbers by placing two tildes between the lower and upper boundaries of the range. The upper and lower boundaries are included in the search. This searches for a string of digits, not a value, so decimal values are not considered; they are treated as a separate string of digits.	1999~~2001 12~~14 would find 12, 13, and 14, but would also find 14.25 as the punctuation in the value breaks up the number into two strings: 14 and 25
Phrase	“ “	To search for a phrase, use quotation marks around it.	“due process of law”
Synonym	&	Synonym searching finds words that have a similar meaning to the search value. To search for words with similar meanings to the search term, use the ampersand (&) at the end of the search term.	fast& would find quickly, rapidly, speedily, etc.