Keyword search wildcards and operators offer powerful options to refine and customize your search capabilities, helping you find exactly what you're looking for amidst vast amounts of information. In this support article, we'll explain how you can use wildcards and operators to define your search parameters and leverage them to capture the precise data you are looking for.
💡 Tip
Keyword Wildcards
Keyword wildcards are placeholders used in search queries to represent unknown or variable elements of a keyword. They enable you to broaden your search results by matching multiple variations of a keyword or phrase. There are three main types of keyword wildcards:
Question Mark (?): Represents any single character.
For example:
Searching for "wom?n" would match results for "woman" and "women".
Asterisk (*): Represents any group of characters, including no character.
For example:
Searching for "comput*" would match results for "computer", "computing", and "computation".
Dollar sign ($): Represents zero or one character.
For example:
Searching for "colo$r" would match results for "color" and "colour".
Wildcard searches are particularly useful when you are unsure of the exact spelling or variation of a keyword or when you want to retrieve results that contain multiple variations of a keyword. However, it's important to use wildcards judiciously, as they can sometimes produce overly broad or irrelevant search results if not used carefully.
Boolean Operators
Boolean search operators are logical connectors that allow you to combine keywords and phrases to create more complex search queries. Worklabs supports the following boolean operators:
AND: Use the AND operator to combine multiple keywords or phrases to find results containing all specified terms. For example, "data AND analysis" will find results that include both "data" and "analysis".
OR: Use the OR operator to broaden your search by including synonyms or related terms. For example, "marketing OR advertising" will find results that include either "marketing" or "advertising".
💡Tip: In Worklabs, adding multiple keywords is treated as an OR condition.
Excluding keywords: To exclude specific keywords or phrases from your search results, use the "Does not contain" option.
Using Parentheses: Use parentheses to group keywords and control the order of operations in complex search queries. For example, "(data OR information) AND analysis" will find results that include either "data" or "information", and also include "analysis".
Keyword Proximity Operators
In search queries, "near" and "within" specify the proximity between two keywords or terms within a certain distance. However, there are differences in how they are interpreted:
NEAR/x:
"NEAR" specifies that the two keywords or terms should appear close to each other, with a maximum distance of "x" words between them.
This means the two terms can appear in any order and with other words between them as long as the total number of words separating them is within the specified distance.
For example, "apple NEAR/3 orange" would match instances where "apple" and "orange" appear within three words of each other, in either order.
WITHIN/x:
"WITHIN" specifies that the two keywords or terms should appear within a certain distance of each other in a specific order.
This means that the first term must appear before the second term, and there can be a maximum of "x" words between them.
For example, "apple WITHIN/3 orange" would only match instances where "apple" appears before "orange" and there are at most three words between them, such as "apple and orange" or "apple near the orange tree".
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