Search query language supports the following operators:
Operator
Description
+
A leading plus sign indicates that this word must be present in every row returned.
-
A leading minus sign indicates that this word must not be present in any row returned.
By default (when neither + nor - is specified) the word is optional, but the rows that contain it are rated higher.
< >
These two operators are used to change a word's contribution to the relevance value that is assigned to a row. The > operator increases the contribution and the < operator decreases it.
( )
Parentheses are used to group words into subexpressions. Parenthesized groups can be nested.
~
A leading tilde acts as a negation operator, causing the word's contribution to the row relevance to be negative. It's useful for marking noise words. A row that contains such a word is rated lower than others, but is not excluded altogether, as it would be with the - operator.
*
An asterisk is the truncation operator. Unlike the other operators, it should be appended to the word.
" "
A phrase that is enclosed within double quote ('"') characters matches only rows that contain the phrase literally, as it was typed.
The following examples demonstrate some search strings that use search query language operators:
Example
Description
history culture
Find rows that contain at least one of the two words.
+history +culture
Find rows that contain both words.
+history culture
Find rows that contain the word "history", but rank rows higher if they also contain "culture".
+history -culture
Find rows that contain the word "history" but not "culture".
+history +(>culture <modern)
Find rows that contain the words "history" and "culture", or "history" and "modern" (in any order), but rank "history culture" higher than "history modern".
cultur*
Find rows that contain words such as "culture", "cultures", or "cultural".
"Faculty of history and culture"
Find rows that contain the exact phrase "Faculty of history and culture" (for example, rows that contain "Faculty of history and culture of Ulyanovsk State Technical University" but not "Faculty of culture and history of Ulyanovsk State Technical University").