Search Tips

Use the information below to learn about how the knowledge base search functions.

Search Terms

Substrings

Search ignores topics where the search term is part of a bigger term.

For example, a search for log will ignore catalog and logarithm.

Quotes

To search for an exact word or phrase, enclose it with quotes.

For example, enclosing "gift card" with quotes will only return topics that contain an instance of gift card. Omitting the quotes will return topics that contain an instance of card (such as credit card or payment card) or gift, in addition to gift card topics.

Boolean Operators

Operator

Support

Notes

AND

Search does not support this Boolean operator.

OR

By default, "OR" search is used when multiple search terms are entered; topics that have any of the terms are returned in the results list.

NOT

Search does not support this Boolean operator.

Ignored Terms

Search ignores minor wordsminor words, such as “a”, "an" and “the”.

  1. a
  2. about
  3. after
  4. against
  5. all
  6. also
  7. among
  8. an
  9. and
  10. are
  11. as
  12. at
  13. be
  14. became
  15. because
  16. been
  17. between
  18. but
  19. by
  20. can
  21. come
  22. do
  23. during
  24. each
  25. early
  26. for
  27. form
  28. found
  29. from
  30. had
  31. has
  32. have
  33. he
  34. her
  35. his
  36. however
  37. in
  38. include
  39. into
  40. is
  41. it
  42. its
  43. late
  44. later
  45. made
  46. many
  47. may
  48. me
  49. med
  50. more
  51. most
  52. near
  53. no
  54. non
  55. not
  56. of
  57. on
  58. only
  59. or
  60. other
  61. over
  62. several
  63. she
  64. some
  65. such
  66. than
  67. that
  68. the
  69. their
  70. then
  71. there
  72. these
  73. they
  74. this
  75. through
  76. to
  77. under
  78. until
  79. use
  80. was
  81. we
  82. were
  83. when
  84. where
  85. which
  86. who
  87. with
  88. you

Auto-Complete

The search box automatically displays up to five suggested search terms/phrases once you start typing. The algorithm that provides this detects spelling errors, the most occurring and probable keywords, and then matches this against past searches to suggest the best search term(s).

Search Results

Ranking

Search results are listed, top to bottom, based on how the search term is used in each topic and the frequency with which it appears. Priority is based on:

  1. topic title
  2. topic metadata (internally assigned keyword(s))
  3. heading 1
  4. heading 2
  5. heading 3
  6. heading 4
  7. heading 4
  8. heading 5
  9. heading 6
  10. normal text

Context

For each topic title returned by a search, the results also include up to 250 characters of text that surrounds the search term.

Attachments

Search does check for instances of a search term within the following file type that exist in the knowledge base:

  • PDF

Search does not check for instances of a search term within any of the following file types that may exist in the knowledge base:

  • DOC
  • DOCX
  • PPT
  • PPTX
  • XLS
  • XLSX
  • TXT