How to Use the Search Engine

1. Type words or phrases into the search box.
2. Select match "all" or "any" terms and select search index.
3. Click the "Search" button or press the "Enter" key.
4. The search engine returns a list of relevant pages, sorted by relevancy.

Case Sensitivity

Searches are case insensitive. Searching for "Galaxy" matches the lowercase "galaxy" and the uppercase "GALAXY."

Words and Phrases

To require all words to match, select match "all" terms. To require any word to match, select match "any" terms. To mark an exact phrase, surround the words of the phrase with double quotation marks (") or join the words of the phrase with hyphens (-).

Example: To find pages about the Eagle Nebula, type "eagle-nebula" into the search box. Phrases can include punctuation or special characters such as periods, commas, slashes, or underscores.

Including or Excluding Words

To include a specific word, place a plus sign (+) before the word. To exclude a specific word, place a minus sign (-) before the word.

Example: To find pages about planetary nebulae except the Ring Nebula, type "nebula +planetary -ring" into the search box.

Wildcard Searches

To perform a wildcard search, use an asterisk (*) to represent an arbitrary sequence of letters, numbers, and punctuation.

Example: To find pages about anything to do with galaxies, type "gala*" into the search box to find galaxy, galaxies, and galactic.

Other Features

The search engine can search for links, text, titles, and urls as follows:

link:address
Finds pages that link to a specific address or a substring of a specific address.

text:text
Finds pages that contain a specific word or phrase in any part of the page other than an image tag, link, or URL.

title:text
Finds pages that contain a specific word or phrase in the page title.

url:text
Finds pages that contain a specific word or phrase in the URL.