Home About Zapmeta Search Tips - Boolean and Field Searching

This help guide will assist you in the understanding of Boolean commands, phrase, proximity, truncation, and search fields. Examples are provided along with tips on how to make your searches more effective.

Boolean Operators and ExpressionsExample
AND or +
The Boolean expression AND (or +) indicate that all specified search terms must be present in the retrieved documents. 		college AND university
Only documents containing both of the words "colleges" and "university" would appear in your search results.

Stanford +university +admission
Retrieve only documents that contain all three words. The plus (+) sign helps to deliver information only about admission at Stanford University, rather than Stanford University in general.

Tip: Use the plus (+) symbol if two or more words are required in the results.

NOT or -
The minus (-) sign and NOT expression lets you to exclude documents containing certain words or phrases. 		Investing NOT stock
Retrieve documents that contain "investing" but not "stock".

Stock Market +NASDAQ -Dow Jones
Retrieve documents that include "stock market" and "NASDAQ", but eliminates any results for "Dow Jones".
OR
The Boolean OR is used to find documents where at least one of your specified search terms is present. 		London OR Paris
Retrieve documents that contain either "London" or "Paris", or both.

Tip: Use the OR command when you are searching keywords that are similar or related.

Other Advanced Search TechniquesExample
NEAR
The NEAR operator enables you to indicate two terms or a phrase within a specified word count. This is an excellent way to ensure that your search terms occur within the same sentence or paragraph.		 John NEAR Kennedy
Produce documents containing John Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, and John Fitzgerald Kennedy within the same sentence.
Nesting
You can construct complex queries by combining Boolean operators in parentheses. 		"Video Games" AND (Playstation OR Xbox)
Return documents that contain the exact phrase "video games" and either "Play station" or "Xbox".

Field SearchingExample
Link:[URL]
Find pages that contain a hyperlink of the specified page URL. 		Link:www.zapmeta.com
Find all pages linking to www.zapmeta.com.

Link:www.zapmeta.com +search engine
Find all pages linking to www.zapmeta.com containing the word "search engine".