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| compare-stuff.com query formation |
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Separate words entered into the boxes on the main part of the form are sent to the search engines automatically ANDed together. For example: But please note that when auto-quote is on (which is the default), multiple words are automatically enclosed in quotes (see below) unless they are already quoted. |
Phrases can be entered in single or double quotes and are passed to the search engine unchanged: |
You can negate or exclude terms by placing a "-" directly before the word or phrase. For example: The auto-quote mechanism does not try to place quotes around terms which contain negated words or phrases. |
When compare-stuff.com sends query terms from multiple boxes on the query form, they are combined with AND. For example: Note that when using "Altavista (near)" search engine, all terms will be combined with the NEAR operator, instead of AND. |
Stopwords (common words which are ignored by the search engine) are different from one engine to another. Some search engines allow you to force them to be considered, you should check their help pages to find out how to do this. Warning: "not" is a stopword with some search engines. |
More advanced search features of search engines may be used. For example you may want to use the boolean OR operator if available. You must protect all such expressions inside parentheses, as in the following: "(gasoline OR petrol)". Please check the query syntax for the search engine you are using before attempting this. The help page links (and OR usage) are provided below:
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