Search Help
This section describes how The New Yorker Search works and the advanced options you can use to help target your searching.
Search results are displayed in order of relevance to the search terms you entered. The relevance score for each result is based on several factors:
- How many times the terms are found in the article
- How many articles contain the search terms
- The weighting of the fields (e.g., title, short description, full article body, etc.) in which search terms are found
Basic Search Syntax
- Terms and Phrases
- Wildcards
- OR
- AND
- NOT
- The + sign
- The - sign
- Grouping
- Word variations
- Capitalization
- Special characters
Advanced Search Syntax
Basic Search Syntax
A search query must contain terms, that is, the actual text you are searching for. It may also contain operators, which are characters that give the search engine further information about how to search for the terms.
If no operators are used with search terms, The New Yorker Search will default to the OR operator (see details below).
Terms and Phrases
Search terms may be either:
- Single Terms: a single word, such as "test" or "hello"
- Phrases: a group of words surrounded by quotation marks, such as "hello dolly." Using the quotation marks ensures the term is searched as a complete phrase, with the words in that order.
You can use operators (such as the ones described below) to combine multiple terms and/or phrases into a more complex search query.
Wildcards
Wildcards let you search for variations on a search term by acting as "stand-ins" for any other character.
The New Yorker Search supports single- and multiple-character wildcard searches:
- Use the ? symbol to substitute for any single character
- Use the * symbol to substitute for multiple characters
For example, the following search term:
te?t
Will return results that match "text," "test," or other similar words with any other single character in the third position.
Multiple-character wildcard searches will look for any number of characters in the position of the wildcard character. For example, the following search term:
test*
Will return results that match "test," "tests," "testing," etc.
Wildcard characters can be used in the middle of end of a search term, but NOT at the beginning. (So "*test" and "?test" are not valid search terms.)
OR
Use the OR operator between two search terms to find document results that contain either of the terms. You can also use the symbol || in place of the word OR.
Note: OR must be ALL CAPS.
In the New Yorker Search, OR is the default operator, meaning that if you do not use any operator between two terms, an OR search will be performed.
For example, to search for results that contain either "classical guitar music" or just "guitar," use the following query:
"classical guitar music" guitar
or
"classical guitar music" OR guitar
AND
Use the AND operator between two search terms to find document results that contain both terms. You can also use the symbol && in place of the word AND.
Note: AND must be ALL CAPS.
For example, to search for results that contain both "classical music" and "acoustic guitar," use the following query:
"classical music" AND " acoustic guitar"
NOT
Use the NOT operator before a search term to find only document results that do not contain that term. You can also use the symbol ! in place of the word NOT.
Note: NOT must be ALL CAPS.
For example, to search for results that contain "classical music" but not "acoustic guitar," use the following query:
"classical music" NOT "acoustic guitar"
The NOT operator is meant to be used when you have multiple search terms. If you use it with just one search term-for example, the following query-you will not get any results:
NOT "acoustic guitar"
The + sign
Use the + sign operator before a search term to require that that term appears in any document results.
For example, to search for results that must contain "music" and may also contain "guitar," use the following query:
+music guitar
The - sign
Use the - sign before a search term to exclude any documents that contain that term from your results.
For example, to search for results that contain "classical music" but do not contain "guitar," use the following query:
"classical music" -guitar
Grouping
The New Yorker Search allows you to use parentheses to group search terms and phrases for more complex queries.
For example, to search for results in which the word "website" must exist with EITHER the words "music" or "guitar," use the following query:
(music OR guitar) AND website
Word Variations
The New Yorker Search will search not only for your search terms, but also for similar terms. For example, searching for the term "test" will return results that contain "test" as well as results matching "tests," "testing," and "tested."
Capitalization
Searches are not case sensitive, meaning that capitalization doesn't matter. For example, searches for "new Yorker," "New Yorker," and "NeW yOrKeR" will all return the same results.
Special Characters
Several special characters may be used as search operators or in search query syntax:
+ - & || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \
For example, the || character is the same as the OR operator.
If you want to search for terms that contain these characters, you must precede them with the \ character. This will ensure that they are treated as search terms, not as operators or query syntax.
For example, to search for (1+1):2, use the following query:
\(1\+1\)\:2
Advanced Search Syntax
Fuzzy Searches
The New Yorker Search supports fuzzy searches, based on the Levenshtein Distance, or Edit Distance algorithm, which will search for terms similar to what you enter.
To perform a fuzzy search, use the tilde, or ~ symbol at the end of a single-word search term. For example, to search for terms similar to "roam," use the following query:
roam~<
This search will return results with terms like "foam" and "roams."
For greater precision, you may also add an optional numerical parameter between 0 and 1 after the tilde. For example,
roam~0.8
The closer the value is to 1, the more similar the matching results must be. If you do not specify a number, a default parameter of 0.5 is used.
Proximity Searches
The New Yorker Search allows you to specify the distance (in words) between search terms within a single document. Use the tilde, or ~ symbol, at the end of the search terms, followed by the number of separating words.
For example, to search for the terms "classical" and "music" within 10 words of each other in a single document, use the following query:
"classical music"~10
Boosting a Term
The New Yorker Search results provide the relevance level of matching documents based on the search terms found.
If you want results with certain search terms to be shown as more relevant than others, you can "boost" that term by using a caret, or ^ symbol, after it, followed by a boost factor (number greater than 0). The higher the boost factor, the more relevant results with that term will be.
If you do not enter a number, the default boost factor will be 1. The boost factor must be a positive number, but it can be less than 1 (e.g., 0.2).
For example, if you are searching for "classical music" and you want the term "classical" to be more relevant than "music," you could use the following query:
classical^4 music
This will make documents with the term classical come up more relevant in the results.
You can also boost Phrase Terms-for example:
"classical guitar"^4 "music"
