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Keyword tips

Keyword search tips

Most of the time entering a keyword like "campfires" or "bake ovens" or "permits" will get you started just fine. But here are some simple operators you can experiment with to refine your search (think of these as a tiny query language).

Operator	Meaning	Example	Finds
+	AND operator; word must be included; use this most of the time	+apples +oranges	both "apples" and "oranges" must be found in the same document.
-	NOT operator; word must not be included	apples -oranges	"apples" must be found without the word "oranges".
*	wild card (must be appended to the end)	camp*	camp, camps, campfire, campfires, Campbell
<blank>	absence of an operator is interpreted as OR; any document with the word will be found	apples oranges	any document with either "apples" or "oranges" will be found
"<phrase>"	exact phrase; words enclosed in double quotes must be found exactly	"orange apples"	the phrase "orange apples" must be found
(<term>)	grouping; search terms in parentheses are evaluated separately	+bananas +(apples oranges)	find "bananas" with either "apples" or "oranges"

Note that keywords less than four characters long are ignored.

Keywords are searched in the Title, Caption, Location, Description, and Body of documents.

Keyword search does not look for the root of plurals. So "campfires" will not find "campfire", nor will "campfire" find "campfires". To find both use "campfire*".

Some (very commonly used) keywords are ignored altogether. These are called "stopwords". For a list see stopwords.