General Information
Our site search engine offers two separate search options through one interface.
- Articles - This searches through our entire print archive of WaterWorld, the current issue of WaterWorld, as well as unique "Only on the Web" exclusives that our staff has written.
- Buyer's Guide - This searches through our Buyer's Guide & Showcases, a dynamic online buyers guide. Searches will be based on a vendor's name, a vendor's description, and the Product/Service categories that they list their organization in.
To enter a query, just select the section of our site that you wish to search, and hit the
'enter' key, or click the "Search" button to retrieve relevant results.
Our system defaults to what is referred to as an "Accumulative" search. There is no need to include "and" or "or" booleans to your search terms.
For example, a search for photoacoustic spectroscopy systems would find all matches for photoacoustic, all matches for spectroscopy, and all matches for systems, and return those with the greatest frequency of all three words at the top. (You can revise this, though, to give you better results -- see "Refining Searches")
Capitalization
Our search engine is not case sensitive. That is, a search for
Xenon Lamps, XENON LAMPS and XeNoN LaMpS is functionally equivalent.
Word Stemming
As our content includes a large number of complex terms, we perform word stemming on all
search keywords. This is so that a match for "spectroscopy" will also match words in our content like "spectroscopic".
However, we do not support "wildcards" at this time. You may not input search terms like "spectro*".
Refining Searches
As our search engine performs an accumulative search, there is a variety of optional parameters that you can use to refine your search to pinpoint accuracy.
Phrase Searching
To let you find the most appropriate content, our search engine facilitates "Phrase Searching." Words enclosed in double quotes will appear together in all returned documents. Phrase searches are very helpful when seeking very specific kinds of information. For example, the above search photoacoustic spectroscopy systems can be enhanced by adding quotes to spectroscopy systems -- i.e. photoacoustic "spectroscopy systems".
Doing so will find all documents with "spectroscopy systems", "spectroscopic systems", "spectroscopy system" et al, as per our Word Stemming guidelines.
"Must-Include" Words
You may also instruct our search engine that certain terms MUST be included in your results by adding a plus sign (+) to the beginning of any keyword.
You may also combine this feature with Phrase Searching. For example, a search for "spectroscopic systems" +photoacoustic will find all matches that contain the phrase spectroscopic systems AND contain photoacoustic. If "photoacoustic" is not present, the search engine will not return the document to you.
You need only notate "Must-Include" words on searches with multiple keywords. i.e. a search for just +photoacoustic is no different than just photoacoustic.
Excluding Words
You may instruct our search engine that certain terms MUST not appear in your results by adding a minus sign (-) to the beginning of any keyword.
You may also combine this feature with Phrase Searching. For example, a search for "spectroscopic systems" +photoacoustic -infrared will find all matches that contain the phrase spectroscopic systems AND contain photoacoustic but DO NOT contain infrared.
You need only notate words to exclude on searches with multiple keywords. i.e. a search for just -infrared would find way too many documents to serve of any use.
Reserved Words
Certain words are reserved and cannot be used with our search engine. They are:
near, within, minus, not, and, or. In addition, certain punctuation is not recognized. You may not use asterisks, semicolons, ampersands, equal signs, tildes, or commas.
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