Using Search

Narrow Your Search

Occasionally, a search term or phrase may provide too many search results. The following tips can help to limit the results to better find what you are looking for:

• Use multiple search terms rather than just one word. For example, the term website returns 17 pages. The term website guidelines returns just one result.
• Use quotes to search for an exact phrase. For example "do what you hope to do" returns results that contain this Frederic Douglas quote.
• Use the minus symbol to exclude a specific word. For example the phrase computer information -technology will exclude the word technology from all search results.
• The search ignores common words (such as pronouns and articles) as well as single letters and single digits. These are referred to as stop words. If you would like to use a stop word to narrow your search, simply place a plus symbol before the search term. For example: Star Wars episode +I

Search within a Department or Domain

There are several ways restrict your search to a specific department or domain. We suggest using one of the following options:

1. If available, utilize the radio buttons available on the department page near the search box. Some sites will have a search box with additional options similar to the example below.
   
2. If this is unavailable, or you need to limit the search further, type the term you are looking for. Press space, then type site: followed by the department URL. For example, a site search within the web department for information about website guidelines should look like this;
   website guidelines site:http://www.northwestern.edu/univ-relations

*note - do not place a "/" after the URL. Doing so cause the search to fail.

Search page titles

If you only remember a phrase within the page title, use allintitle: in addition to your search words. For example: allintitle: behavioral standards

Search page addresses or URLs

If you only remember a portion of the page address or URL, use allinurl: in addition to your search words. For example: allinurl: rugby ancient

Do plurals or verb tenses matter?

Yes - it does matter whether you search for a plural word or change the tense of a verb. For example, deploy will display different results than deployed.

Wildcard Searches

Wildcard Searches have been disabled.

Webmaster Information

Search Specs

The Google Search appliance runs software version 5.0. For specific or technical questions not covered in this document, please refer to the official Google Search Appliance 5 documentation site.

Crawl & Index

The NU crawler begins to look for content at the main University page, http://www.northwestern.edu/, and follows links as far as it can, discovering and indexing as many University pages as possible whose URLs match the pattern *.northwestern.edu/*

Implementation & Code

Several types of search boxs are present at Northwestern. The one you will want to is dependent on your needs. If you are unable to insert the code into your website, please contact search support.

View the code here.

Content Inclusion

By default, all web addresses that contain northwestern.edu are included in the search.

Content Exclusion

You have the ability to exclude either entire websites or specific pages through the a simple robots.txt exclusion.

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