Overview

SearchVista supports advanced queries, by utilizing logical operators, explicit forcing modifiers, phrases, and exclusions, you can find specific things efficiently.

Query Operators & Syntax

1. Implicit AND (Multi-Term Search)

By default, providing multiple terms without explicit operators acts as a logical AND match. All individual term must appear within a document for it to score as a matching hit.

Example: distributed software database
Finds pages containing "distributed", "software", and "database".

2. Forced Requirement (+ Modifier)

Prepend a + symbol directly to a term to mark it as strictly required. This prevents the engine from relaxing your query into an alternative "best-effort" OR fallback mode if there are not many results.

Example: retro computing +mips
Makes sure that "mips" must be present in every single result returned, disabling the OR-fallback loops.

3. Term Exclusion (- Modifier)

Prepend a - symbol directly to a term to completely remove documents containing that term from the results page.

Example: operating systems -windows
Finds pages discussing operating systems, but purges any document mentioning "windows".

4. Exact Phrases ("...")

Enclose terms inside quotation marks to search for the exact matching terms.

Example: "the fastest search engine on the web"
Matches the exact set of terms in order.

5. Explicit OR Groups & Parentheses

You can build grouped query conditions using parentheses and the uppercase OR keyword. A document satisfies the criteria if it matches all top-level requirements along with at least one matching term from the OR group.

Example: operating system (unix OR bsd OR linux)
Matches documents about operating systems that mention at least one of the three specified kernels.

6. Site & Domain Filtering (site:) (This operator can be negated. e.g. -site:example.com)

Restrict your search results to a specific top-level domain (TLD), domain, or its subdomains. Note: Filter queries of this type can be used completely on their own--no additional search words are required.

Example (TLD matching): site:com
Matches any page hosted under the .com TLD (e.g., example.com, abc.com).

7. File Type & Filename Filtering (file:) (This operator can be negated. e.g. -file:example.pdf)

Match specific document extensions or exact file names. Like site filters, these can be run as standalone queries without requiring additional search terms.

Example (Extension matching): file:pdf
Matches any indexed PDF document across the web.
Example (Exact filename matching): file:rfc8555.pdf
Matches specifically the file named rfc8555.pdf.

Automatic Query Relaxation and Term Penalties