The Basics of Toronto.NET Search

Toronto.NET search is easy. Simply type one or more search words into the search box and press the [Enter] key or click the Search button.

In response, search engine produces a results page: a list of web pages related to your search words, with the most relevant page appearing first, then the next one, and so on.

Here are some basic tips to help you maximize the effectiveness of your search:

Proper search terms Capitalization Automatic [AND] queries

Exclusion of common words Phrase searches Complex searches

Search Results Page

Your search results page returns a lot of information. Here's a brief guide to decoding it.

Each blue item is a search result that the Toronto.NET search engine found for your search terms. The first item is the most relevant match found; the second is the next-most relevant, and so on down the list.

Clicking on any blue link will take you to the associated web page. Here's a sample search results page, along with brief explanations of the various types of information about your search results that you can find there.

A.	Search field To do a search on Toronto.NET, just type in a few descriptive search words, then press [Enter] or click the Search button.
B.	Search button Click this button to go with another search query. You can also submit your query by pressing the [Enter] key.
C.	Advanced search This links to a page on which you can do more flexible searches. [ More about Advanced Search ]
D.	Help This page provides the help on how to do searches and interpret results.
E.	Words Priority Unique feature of Toronto.NET search engine is to allow the user to specify the different priorities for different words in search expression, and thus having different search result sets. Any word in search expression can have priority from 1(lowest) to 5(highest) (by default 3 for all words). The left radio button above the word assigns to the word lowest priority (1), the right radio button - highest priority (5). After you've assigned priorities for words, click Search button to do the search based on your custom preferences.
F.	Statistics bar This line describes your search and indicates the total number of results, as well as how long the search took to complete.
G.	Page title The first line of any search result item is the title of the web page found. Click  the title link to open web page in separate window.
H.	Site Info This small image has a link to web site information in Toronto.NET database. You may find here base URL, contact info, site description and screenshot.
I.	Cached Page Clicking this link will show you the contents of the web page when we last indexed it. If for some reason the site link doesn't connect you to the original page, you might still find the information you need on the cached version.
J.	View History This link opens the page where recorded all modifications of the page after we started indexing it. You may open cached page of any previous version.
K.	Updated This date is the date of page last recorded modification or indexing (for dynamic pages).
L.	Thumbnail Small cached thumbnail of original web site where searched page is resided. Click on image will open related web site information page.
M.	Category Location Points to the directory where web site containing searched page is located. Clicking the link (Hockey in the example) will open the related category.
N.	Description Briefly describes the web site where page is resided. Provides general information about the resource, like business specialization.
O.	URL of result This is direct web address of the returned result.
P.	Text below the title This is an excerpt (snipplet) from the result page with your query terms are bolded.

Proper search terms

Choosing the right search terms is the key point to finding the information you need! Start with the simplest – if you're looking for general information on Hockey, try Hockey.

But it's often advisable to use multiple search terms; if you're planning to send your son to the junior hockey league, you'll do better with Junior Hockey than with either Junior or Hockey by themselves. And Junior Hockey League may produce even better results.

Toronto.NET searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. For example, searches for junior hockey, Junior Hockey, and jUNIOr hOCKey will all return the same results.

Automatic [AND] queries

By default, Toronto.NET only returns pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include [AND] between terms. Keep in mind that the order in which the terms are typed will affect the search results. To restrict a search further, just include more terms. For example, to plan to by a hockey tickets, simply type hockey tickets.

Automatic exclusion of common words

Toronto.NET search engine ignores common words and characters such as "where" and "how", as well as certain single digits and single letters, because they tend to slow down your search without improving the results. Toronto.NET will indicate if a common word has been excluded by displaying details on the results page below the search box.

The way of including a common word in search expression is conducting a phrase search, which simply means putting quotation marks around two or more words. Common words in a phrase search (e.g., "where are you") are included in the search.

For example, to search for Star Wars Episode I (where "I" is a common word), use:

Phrase searches

Sometimes you'll only want results that include an exact phrase. In this case, simply put quotation marks around your search words.

Phrase searches are particularly effective if you're searching for proper names ("Mel Lastman")  or other famous phrases ("To be or not to be").

Complex searches

Sometimes you'll want results that include complex criteria, including exact phrases, AND, OR, EXT operators. You can combine expressions using these operators and brackets as group dividers.

For example, to search for the phrase data recovery or phrase recovery software on the same site where abbreviation MBR (master boot record) occurs, use:

For more information on search operators (AND, OR, EXT), see Advanced Help topics.