Query Language

The following is an excerpt from the Microsoft Index Server Guide.

This list gives the rules for formulating queries:

Multiple consecutive words are treated as a phrase; they must appear in the same order within a matching document.

Queries are case-insensitive, so you can type your query in uppercase or lowercase.

You can search for any word except for those in the exception list (for English, this includes a, an, and, as, and other common words), which are ignored during a search.

Words in the exception list are treated as placeholders in phrase and proximity queries. For example, if you searched for “Word for Windows”, the results could give you “Word for Windows” and “Word and Windows”, because for is a noise word and appears in the exception list.

Punctuation marks such as the period (.), colon (:), semicolon (;), and comma (,) are ignored during a search.

To use specially treated characters such as &, |, ^, #, @, $, (, ), in a query, enclose your query in quotation marks (“).

You can use Boolean Operators (AND, OR, and NOT) and the Proximity Operator (NEAR) to specify additional search information.

Boolean and Proximity Operators

Boolean and proximity operators can create a more precise query.

To Search For	Example	Results
Both terms in the same page	`access and basic` —Or— `access & basic`	Pages with both the words “access” and “basic”
Either term in a page	`cgi or isapi`—Or— `cgi \| isapi`	Pages with the words “cgi” or “isapi”
The first term without the second term	`access and not basic`—Or— `access & ! basic`	Pages with the word “access” but not “basic”
Both terms in the same page, close together	`excel near project`—Or— `excel ~ project`	Pages with the word “excel” near the word “project”