This page offers instructions on how to use different search methods.
The Ameron search engine searches for pages which contain ALL of the given search terms. The results will be sorted in order of the number of terms matched, and the determined relevancy score.
Wildcard searches
You can use wildcard characters * and ? in your search terms to search for multiple words and return larger set of results. An asterisk character (*) in a search term represents any number of characters, while a question mark (?) represents any single character.
This allows you to perform advanced searches such as bondstr* which would return all pages containing words beginning with 'bondstr'.
Similarly, b??d would return all pages containing four letter words beginning with 'b' and ending with 'd'. Also, *bond* would be a search for any words containing the word 'bond'.
Exact phrase searches
An exact phrase search returns results where the phrase of words are found, in the same order that they are specified. For example, an exact phrase search for the words "fuel handling" would only return results where the phrase 'fuel handling' appears. It would not return pages where the words 'fuel' and 'handling' are found separately, or in a different order such as, 'handling fuel'.
Exclude words
You can precede a search term with a hyphen character to exclude that search term from being included in your search results. For example, a search for cat -dog would return all pages containing the word 'cat' but not the word 'dog'.
Skip words
Note that some common words such as 'the', 'and' and 'or' may be deemed to be skipped words and ignored by the search. This is configured by the web site administrator.
