Making Queries

Excite for Web Servers gives web users access to a sophisticated concept-basedsearching engine. But even though the search engine is advanced, userscan form queries without using a complicated query language. This pagewill help you to choose the queries that will give you the bestresults.

Query Basics

A query is simply a description of an information need. Unlike Booleansystems that search for just those documents containing all thewords in your query, Excite for Web Servers will search for documents that are abest match for the words in your query. Excite for Web Servers will also search fordocuments that are about the same concepts that your query describes,so sometimes Excite for Web Servers will bring back articles that don't mentionany of the words in your original query.

What this means is that your query -- the description of yourinformation need -- can be as detailed as you like. Don't worry aboutproviding too many words; the more words, the better. Additional wordsin your query will help Excite for Web Servers figure out what concepts you'rereally interested in. On the other hand, Excite for Web Servers will do a prettygood job of figuring out what documents are interesting to you even ifyour query is vague.

For example, let's say you're searching a web site for documents aboutcustomer support for the Widget2000 product you're using. A goodstarting point would be

        customer support for the Widget2000

If you have a question about a particular feature of the Widget2000,for example the Blurfl upgrade package, you might choose a query like

        customer support for the Blurfl upgrade package        of the Widget2000

Even if there are no documents that are actually about the Blurflupgrade, Excite for Web Servers will still show you documents about Widget2000customer support.

Advanced Query Tips

Here are some suggestions for getting the best results out ofExcite for Web Servers.

Only use words that are relevant to your query: If you're looking for documents about the Widget2000, don't enter aquery like "Find me all documents about the Widget2000". Excite for Web Serversconsiders all the words in your query to be part of yourinformation need, so queries like the previous example will find alldocuments about finding all documents about the Widget2000, whichmay not be exactly what you want.
Specify multiple forms of the same phrases: Excite for Web Servers distinguishes between hyphenated and un-hyphenated words. So,sometimes it might be necessary to explicitly say that you want bothversions, for example "CDROM CD-ROM". Excite for Web Servers will try to figureout that CDROM and CD-ROM are the same, but it never hurts toexplicitly specify multiple forms.
Common words are ignored: Excite for Web Servers doesn't index common words like a, and, or the.Consequently, those words in your query will be ignored. Excite for Web Servers alsoignores numbers; however, it can find strings that happen to contain anumber, for example 3Com.