corzoogle logo - a simple chubby magnifier with a lightening bolt inset. Everything is in a cool semi-transparent grey gradient.

Corzoogle Tips..

basic searching..

Simply, corzoogle scans documents for the terms you input, returning documents containing all those terms. if you search for..

macness

.. you will get back a list of all documents containing the word "macness".

If you search for..

macness swiss

.. you will get back a list of documents containing the word "macness" AND the word "swiss". In other words, corzoogle operates in boolean AND mode.

You can narrow down a search by simply entering more and more relevant query terms. "stop-words" (stuff like "of", "the", etc), are removed from the search query, and not taken into consideration, unless part of a phrase.

NOT again..

This search behaviour can be modified in other ways, too, the most common is the boolean NOT. This allows you to exclude terms from your search, and is achieved by simply putting a "-" (minus) sign in front of some word, a search for..

macness -swiss

.. would return all documents containing the word "macness", but excluding any documents that contain the word "swiss". Again, this is used to narrow down searches, enabling you to focus on the information you need.

You can include multiple NOT words in your query, too, a search for..

macness joy -dog -hamster

is just fine

rank scoring..

corzoogle scores documents by their relevance to your input query. Unless you (or the webmaster, if you are searching someone's site) has disabled it, the scoring mechanism is weighted towards terms that appear earlier in your search string, for instance, a search for

mac osx sudo box

.. would return exactly the same documents as a search for..

sudo box mac osx

.. but the results would be returned in a different order, the first with documents more relevant to "mac", then "osx", etc, and the second with documents that featured more occurences of the word "sudo".

This usually gets the most relevant document to the top of the list, useful in a big search with multiple terms.

"phrase" scoring..

as well as the individual query terms, corzoogle considers the query phrase as a whole, and scores documents containing "phrases" more highly. if you searched for..

oh macness

.. all the documents containing both words would be returned, but any documents containing the phrase "oh macness", would be ranked higher. any "stop-words" ("and", "of", etc) in the original query are taken into consideration when looking for "phrases", so although a search for..

oh macness of the puter joy

.. would, in fact, only be looking for documents containing the words "oh" + "macness" + "puter" + "joy" ("of" and "the" having been removed), but any document that contains the exact phrase "oh macness of the puter joy" will rightly be considered a direct hit.

There is no need to add quotes, it happens automatically! (if the web master has phrase matching enabled, that is - probably)

titles and filenames..

corzoogle considers other aspects of a document too, in our search for..

oh macness

Any document containing either "oh" or "macness" in its title, or its filename will receive a bonus, if the entire phrase "oh macness" is there, a further bonus is awarded; another way of getting the most relevant files to the top of your search results.

file name searching..

A dot "." is taken into consideration when searching, not removed, so one can easily locate documents that link to other documents. if you are looking for a particular document, you can also search by filename. a search for..

index.html

.. will return a list of all documents containing the word "index.html", as usual, but corzoogle will also present a list of all files matching "index.html"

You can use wildcard file matching too. A search for..

.html

.. will return a list of all files matching .html, in other words; all html files in corzoole's search zone, or any file that contains the term "html" in its name. It works the other way too, a search for..

index.

.. will return a list of all files with "index" anywhere in their filename.

searching for..

.index

.. achieves exactly the same file search result, though probably with a great deal less regular page hits above it. This is useful when searching only for matching filenames.

To invoke this special file searching behaviour, simply add a dot.

Conclusion..

All in all, corzoogle makes it easy to locate the information you need, and folks running corzoogle themselves will find almost every aspect of corzoogle's search behaviour, and lots of other stuff, fully configurable in the user preferences inside corzoogle itself.

Syndication

You can syndicate this page of tips using https://corz.org/server/tools/corzoogle/tips.txt, a simple <div> containing all of the above, always fresh and up-to-date for your users. Simply insert..

  <?php include 'https://corz.org/server/tools/corzoogle/tips.txt'; ?>

.. anywhere in your page.

For a detailed overview of corzoogle's preferences, check out this page.

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