Searching Guide

Terms 

A query is broken up into terms and operators. There are two types of terms: Single Terms and Phrases.

A Single Term is a single word such as "air" or "quality".

A Phrase is a group of words surrounded by double quotes such as "air quality".

Multiple terms can be combined together with Boolean operators to form a more complex query.

Examples:

• Searching for email could result in 35 hits (items that contain the word email)
• Searching for content results in 123 hits (items that contain the word content)
• Searching for email content (without quotes) results in 148 hits (items that contain the words email or content or both)
• Searching for email AND content results in 10 hits (items that contain both words email and content)
• Searching for "email content" (with quotes) results in 7 hits (items that contain the words email and content directly after each other)
• Searching for title:email results in 5 hits (items that contain the word email in the title)
• Searching for title:content results in 14 hits (items that contain the word content in the title)
• Searching for +title:email +title:content or title:"email content" results in 2 hits (both items contain both words email and content in the title)

Special Characters

The ExactTarget wiki supports escaping special characters that are part of the query syntax. The current list of special characters are

+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \

To escape these characters, use the \ before the character. For example, to search for Retrieve All Jobs for Enterprise Account (Tracking Bulk Async) type Retrieve All Jobs for Enterprise Account \(Tracking Bulk Async\).

Fields

Lucene supports fielded data. Fielded data is content that resides within a searchable field.

When performing a search you type the field name followed by a colon ":" and then the term for which you are looking. Targeting a specific field in the query can be more accurate than searching with just a search term without the field.

Remember that certain special characters must be escaped in the query by using the back-slash (\) character or embraced within quotation ("") whenever they are a part of text to search.

Example:

• title:"Content Syndication"
• content:email
  • title:"Content Syndication" AND content:email

Note: The field is only valid for the term that it directly precedes, so the query title:Do it right will only find "Do" in the title field.

Wildcard Searches

You can search using single and multiple character wildcard searches within single terms (not within phrase queries). Note: You cannot use a * or ? symbol as the first character of a search.

• To perform a single character wildcard search use the "?" symbol.
  The single character wildcard search looks for terms that match that with the single character replaced. For example, to search for "text" or "test" you can use the search: te?t
• To perform a multiple character wildcard search use the "*" symbol.
  Multiple character wildcard searches looks for 0 or more characters. For example, to search for test, tests or tester, you can use the search: test*

You can also use the wildcard searches in the middle of a term: te*t

Fuzzy Searches

You can perform fuzzy searches based on the Edit Distance algorithm. To do a fuzzy search use the tilde, "~", symbol at the end of a single word term. For example, to search for a term similar in spelling to "air" use the fuzzy search: air~. This search will find items containing terms like air and airplane, but also aid.

Proximity Searches

You can find words that are within a specific distance away. To do a proximity search use the tilde, "~", symbol at the end of a Phrase. For example to search for "air" and "quality" within 10 words of each other in a document use the search: "air quality"~10

Boosting a Term

The Geoportal extension provides the relevance level of matching documents based on the terms found. To boost a term use the caret, "^", symbol with a boost factor (a number) at the end of the term you are searching. The higher the boost factor, the more relevant the term will be. Boosting allows you to control the relevance of a document by boosting its term.

For example, if you are searching for email content and you want the term "email" to be more relevant, boost it using the ^ symbol along with the boost factor next to the term. You would type: email^4 quality. This will make documents with the term email appear more relevant. You can also boost Phrase Terms as in the example: "email content"^4 "content boxes". By default, the boost factor is 1. While the boost factor must be positive, it can be less than 1 (e.g. 0.2)

Boolean Operators

Boolean operators allow terms to be combined through logic operators. You can search using AND, "+", OR, NOT and "-" as Boolean operators.

Note: Boolean operators must be ALL CAPS.

• The OR operator is the default conjunction operator. This means that if there is no Boolean operator between two terms, the OR operator is used. The OR operator links two terms and finds a matching document if either of the terms exist in a document. This is equivalent to a union using sets. The symbol || can be used in place of the word OR.
• The AND operator matches documents where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single document. This is equivalent to an intersection using sets. The symbol && can be used in place of the word AND.
• The "+" or required operator requires that the term after the "+" symbol exist somewhere in a field of a single document.
• The NOT operator excludes documents that contain the term after NOT. This is equivalent to a difference using sets. The symbol ! can be used in place of the word NOT. Note: The NOT operator cannot be used with just one term.

Grouping

You can use parentheses to group clauses to form sub queries. This can be very useful if you want to control the boolean logic for a query. For example: (air OR water) AND quality will find documents containing the words air and quality or the words water and quality or both.