Search Rules

This search engine helps you find documents on Boston Online. Here's how it works: you tell the search engine what you're looking for by typing in keywords, phrases, or questions in the search box. The search engine responds with a list of all the pages in our index related to your query. The most relevant content will appear at the top of your results. NOTE: The search engine does NOT currently index messages in the Wicked Good Conference. Until we synchronize the two databases, you'll need to use the conference's own search engine.

How To Use:

1. Type your keywords in the search box.
2. Press the Search or Go button to start your search.

Here's an example:

1. Type Boston Red Sox in the search box.
2. Press the Search button or hit Enter.
3. The Results page will show you the Boston Online pages that refer to the Sox.

Tip: Don't worry if you find a large number of results. In fact, use more than a couple of words when searching. Even though the number of results will be large, the most relevant content will always appear at the top of the result pages.

More Basics - An Overview

Here's a quick overview of the rest of our Basic Help. Just click on the links to jump to these sections.

What is a Word?
What is a Phrase?
Simple Tips for More Exact Searches

What is a Word?

When searching, think of a word as a combination of letters and numbers. The search engine needs to know how to separate words and numbers to find exactly what you want on the Internet. You can separate words using white space and tabs.

What is a Phrase?

You can link words and numbers together into phrases if you want specific words or numbers to appear together in your result pages. If you want to find an exact phrase, use "double quotation marks" around the phrase when you enter words in the search box.

Example: To find out the meaning of the phrase "so don't I," type "so don't I" in the search box. You can also create phrases using punctuation or special characters such as dashes, underscore lines, commas, slashes, or dots.

Simple Tips for More Exact Searches

Searches are case insensitive. Searching for "Fur" will match the lowercase "fur" and uppercase "FUR".

Including or excluding words:

To make sure that a specific word is always included in your search topic, place the plus (+) symbol before the key word in the search box. To make sure that a specific word is always excluded from your search topic, place a minus (-) sign before the keyword in the search box.

Example: To find links to information about the Red Line subway, try "+red -sox".

Expand your search using wildcards (*):

By typing an * at the end of a keyword, you can search for the word with multiple endings.

Example: Try wish*, to find wish, wishes, wishful, wishbone, and wishy-washy.