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To search CompletePlanet, simply enter a query or a series of terms in the search edit box:
montana capital
Then, select how you want your query terms to be processed.
Your choices are:
All of these words
Any of these words
As a phrase
As a Boolean query
The default is: All of these words and the options are explained below under the Natural vs. Boolean Query topic.
The greatest power is in composing effective queries and using Boolean operators.
Finally, click the 'Search' button.
CompletePlanet will process your query.
If you entered a Boolean query the results will be immediatly displayed.
If you entered a simple query, CompletePlanet will convert it into a Boolean query and prompt you for confirmation.
Natural vs. Boolean Query
Standard Boolean Operators: AND, OR, AND NOT
Synonym Boolean Characters: &, +, -
Phrase Searching: Using Quotes
Advanced Boolean Operators: NEAR, BEFORE, AFTER
Boolean Query Construction with Parentheses
Automatic Wildcards and Stemming
Acceptable Characters
Ignored Characters
CompletePlanet's Stoplist
User Messages
A Word About Pornographic Sites
There are also some tips and simple rules that can be combined for even more effective results:
Quick Search Tips
When you enter a query in the search box, CompletePlanet automatically evaluates whether it is a "natural query" (simple text query using keywords, questions or sentences) or a "structured (Boolean) query."
Structured or Boolean queries must follow specific syntax rules as noted below, including proper use of special operators, use of parentheses, and bounded phrases in quotes.
Different treatment applies to natural queries vs. Boolean queries.
Natural queries have a stoplist applied and all keywords are treated equivalently (using the OR or AND Boolean operator or a phrase based upon your choice).
Natural or simple text queries may have a series of keywords separated by spaces or commas (the commas are not used as part of the query term).
The terms are handled based upon the selection you make from the picklist.
Your choices are:
- All of these words
This option allows you to enter a single word or a group of words.
It will find and accept ONLY those documents that contain ALL the words in this textbox; therefore, the AND operator is assumed.
In the returned documents, your words may be together, but not necessarily — the only requirement is that they all be contained in the document.
- Any of These Words
This option is the same as using the OR operator.
Documents containing any one or combination of more than one of the entered terms will be returned.
This following query returns all documents that mention Abbott or Costello or both.
Abbott OR Costello
- As a phrase
Phrases are groups of two or more words.
The South Dakota LIVE system will accept ONLY those documents that contain at least one occurrence of the phrase words precisely in the order in which you entered them as a query.
The example below will return documents with the phrase :
"War and Peace"
"United States of America"
Do not place single words in quotes — they are not phrases.
- As a Boolean query
With this option, you can enter a standard Boolean query.
The supported Boolean operators are:
Structured queries behave exactly as you have specified them, assuming proper Boolean syntax.
Any query that does not meet structured (Boolean) requirements will be reformatted and you will be prompted to choose which conversion best meets your need.
- Use AND to retrieve documents that include all of the search terms.
The example below will only return documents that contain both the words deep and the word web:
deep AND web
- Use OR to retrieve documents that include any of the search words (rather than most) Example:
deep OR web
- Use AND NOT to indicate a word that must not appear in any returned documents.
The NOT operator is acceptable when used as the first item in your query; when used to join two terms, you must use AND NOT. Examples:
NOT locomotive
dolphins AND NOT football
If Boolean operators appear in quotes or as part of a quoted phrase, they will be interpreted as a search term or part of a search term rather than as a Boolean operator.
Due to customer demand, CompletePlanet now supports single character Boolean operators. Instead of typing the Boolean operator AND you can simply use the & or + characters. CompletePlanet will automatically convert them to their Boolean counterparts.
Another popular Boolean shortcut character is the dash character (-) to indicate NOT or AND NOT. CompletePlanet will correctly convert the - character to exclude the term immediately following it.
-shopping -retail +book +review
will be translated to:
NOT shopping AND NOT retail AND book AND review
- Use balanced double quotes around specific phrases to focus your search on occurrences of the actual phrase.
The example below will return only documents with the precise phrase:
"War and Peace"
While CompletePlanet will process it just fine, don't place single words in quotes since they are not phrases.
The Boolean proximity operators - NEAR, BEFORE, AFTER, NOT NEAR, NOT BEFORE, NOT AFTER - test whether the two joined terms are within ten words of one another.
The specific effects of these operators are:
- NEAR — the terms on the left side of this operator must be within 10 words of the term on the right side of the operator
- BEFORE — the term preceding this operator must appear before and within 10 words of the term following the operator
- AFTER — the term preceding this operator must appear after and within 10 words of the term following the operator
- NOT NEAR — the search test is met ONLY if the term preceding this operator is more than the 10 words away from the term following the operator or one or both of the terms do not exist on the document
- NOT BEFORE — the search test is met if: 1) the term preceding this operator is not before the term following; 2) the term preceding this operator is more than 10 words BEFORE the term following the operator; or 3) one or both of the terms do not exist on the document
- NOT AFTER — the search test is met if: 1) the term preceding this operator is not after the term following; 2) the term preceding this operator is more than 10 words AFTER the term following the operator; or 3) one or both of the terms do not exist on the document.
Boolean proximity operators can sometimes return ambiguous results.
In general, only use them with rather simple structured queries or endeavor to use them only in the innermost nested parentheses of a complicated query.
If Boolean operators appear in quotes or as part of a quoted phrase, they will be interpreted as a search term or part of a search term and not as a Boolean operator.
Structured (Boolean) queries can use parentheses similar to algebraic notation.
Structured queries are evaluated from the "inside out."
In other words, the innermost pair of parentheses is evaluated first, then those surrounding them, and so on.
There must ALWAYS be an equal number of left- and right-hand parentheses in a query specification.
There is no practical limit to the degree of nesting of parenthetical arguments you can use.
Equal parenthetical levels are evaluated in order of operator precedence, and then from left to right.
This order of evaluation is:
- The "innermost" nest of parentheses outward
- From left- to right at the same level of precedence
- In order of operator precedence (NOT operators first, then proximity, then AND, then OR).
CompletePlanet automatically stems most common plural and singular forms of words (a search on cat will also return results containing the word cats, and a search on cats will return results containing the word cat).
Therefore, there is no need for you to wildcard your queries (sometimes denoted as the asterisk [*] character in other search systems).
Only letters, numbers and certain punctuation marks (parentheses, quotation marks, the apostrophe, commas, periods, dashes, and underscores) are valid characters.
Numbers and punctuation marks can only be used within phrases.
Quotation marks ARE NOT allowed in phrases.
Rather, they identify a phrase by what they contain within their open and close quote boundaries.
Acceptable characters:
1234567890( ) " ' , . - _ [these must all occur within a quoted phrase, e.g., "1990's"]
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
CompletePlanet's search function ignores upper and lower case.
Your query terms can be all uppercase, lowercase or a mixture; they will all be evaluated as lowercase.
Except for the acceptable characters noted above, all other characters are ignored.
These ignored characters are:
@#$% ^ ~ = | < > ; : \ [ ] { } / ?
Additional characters may also be ignored, including foreign characters using umlauts; acute, grave, and circumflex accents; tildes, cedillas; etc.
Also, with the advent of some word processors which can be used as browsers, it is possible that they will generate "smart quotes".
Smart quotes are NOT the same as normal quotation marks and may cause problems if directly cut-and-pasted into the CompletePlanet search box.
If your query is natural language or simple text, CompletePlanet applies a large 'stoplist' of terms to ignore.
These stoplist terms include prepositions, conjunctions, articles, common verbs, adverbs, etc., that convey little or no meaning to the actual query request.
The terms are stripped from your query and then ignored in the actual search retrieval results.
You may encounter several messages as a result of your searches. For example:
- No results found (0 - 0 of 0 from [number of documents in system]) — No documents met your query condition.
- Your query could not be processed — You entered one or more invalid characters or tried to search with no query terms entered.
- Server is too busy to process your query right now — This one is pretty clear.
- Please try again later — Too many users are attempting to search at the same time.
This message occurs only at highest demand times; if it occurs, you can usually re-issue your query immediately and get results.
CompletePlanet's policy is to exclude all pornographic sites from its listings.
If you find a pornographic site which the system missed, please notify us at: support@completeplanet.com.
Many search retrieval problems come down to less-than-adequate queries.
Here are some simple rules you can follow to improve your results:
- Try to avoid overly broad queries (such as "Internet") using only one query term
- Use more rather than fewer keywords; the biggest mistake of many searchers is using too few query terms (often, just one term — sheesh!)
- For searches that identify very large results sets, consider using structured (Boolean) queries
- Use nouns and objects as query keywords
- Use synonyms via the OR operator
- Combine keywords into phrases where possible
- Combine "concepts" in your query and distinguish them with parentheses
- Order "concepts" with subject first; place your narrowest (most restrictive) concept to be evaluated first
- Link "concepts" with the AND operator.
Additional information to help you become a better searcher can be found at BrightPlanet's award-winning Tutorial: A Guide to Effective Searching of the Internet.
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