Tips

Scott County Historical Society
Scott County, Virginia
Search Tips
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The search engine works like most of the search engines on the internet. However, there are a few "subtle" differences that warrant mentioning here.

This particular search engine defaults to locating all of the words in your search phrase. That means, if you type 'Cambria County Pennsylvania' (without the quote marks) into the search box, all three words must appear somewhere on the web page to be considered a "hit". If the search engine cannot find any matches for all three words, then it will look again, but this time look for any of the three words typed into the box. When this happens, you will notice that the search results will contain the following notation (just under the heading "Search Results from this site"):

No pages found that include all search words.
Found xxx items with one or more search words, now showing 1 - 10


Phrase Searching: There is no phrase searching. Putting quotes around your search words will have no effect on the results of the search. It will still default to 'find all words' (anywhere within the web page).
Wild Cards: * is a wildcard character. If a search term ends with an asterisk, it will look for all words beginning with the characters before the asterisk. For example, entering 'Johns*' (without the quotes) will return pages containing the words: Johns, Johnson, Johnston, Johnstown, etc.
Wild Cards: ? is the other wildcard character. This character is used for substitution when only one character of the search phrase is changed. For example, entering 'Peters?n' (without the quotes) will return pages containing the words: Peterson, Petersen, etc. You can have more than one '?' in a phrase. 'P?ters?n' will return pages containing the words: Paterson, Peterson, Patersen, Petersen, etc.
Boolean Operators: The + and - signs are used for Boolean searches. By placing the + sign immediately before the search word, that tells the search engine that the word must be on the list of pages returned. By placing the - sign immediately before the search word, that tells the search engine that the word must not be on the list of pages returned. For example, entering '+Pringle -Cemetery' (without the quotes) will return all the pages containing the word 'Pringle', but not also containing the word 'Cemetery'. So, you will get most references to the Pringle surname, but none of the listings of Pringle burials. Conversely, entering '+Pringle +Cemetery' should get you listings of all cemeteries where the Pringle name is found.
Combining Operators: All of the above operators can be combined into one search phrase. For example, entering '+Johns* +Peters?n -Johnstown' should get you a listing containing all words beginning with Johns, that also have the word Peterson or Petersen on the page, but not the word Johnstown on the page. So, if there was a web page that had all the words Peterson, Johnson and Johnstown, that page won't be listed, because we've excluded (in our search request) pages containing Johnstown.