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To perform a simple search, type one or more words in the Search box at the top of the page and click Search. IBM Search returns a list of Web pages from your country that contain one or more of your words. Search finds singular and plural forms of words and corrects minor misspellings.

Alternatively, you can enter a single wildcard character, the asterisk (*) , to find all content for the subject content type For example, on an events search page an asterisk (*) in the search query field would find all events. It is intended to use this wildcard in conjunction with specific search criteria, to scope your search down to find all events in a certain location, for example.

Effective search strategies

To make your search more effective, do the following:

  1. Be specific. Try using words that are unique or try adding descriptive words. For example, a search for thinkpad may give you too many results. If you're really looking for ThinkPad drivers, specify thinkpad drivers or thinkpad dvd drivers.
  2. Try using synonyms. If you get too few results or Search doesn't find what you're looking for, try synonyms for your original words. For example, instead of searching for java classes, try java education.
  3. Check your spelling. A single misspelled or mistyped word can change your results.
  4. Learn from your results. Your search may not return exactly what you're looking for, but scanning the results may help you see the words that were found and give you ideas for other searches.

Search isn't case sensitive, so don't worry about capitalization.

Improving your search words

Exact phrase searches Add double quotes (" ") around specific phrases to focus your search on the exact phrase. A phrase search can greatly reduce the number of results. For example, you could enter:

"lotus notes support"

This query returns only pages that have the exact phrase "lotus notes support"in them.

Including and excluding words To help limit your results to specific information you can include special modifiers that require certain words be included or excluded. Do not leave any space between the sign and the word, but leave a space between search words.

+ (plus sign)
Use a + sign at the beginning of a word to require that the word appear in all pages in the results. For example, you could enter:

+thinkpad +drivers

The results will return documents that contain the words thinkpad and drivers. Note: This is the default search behavior if you were to enter these words without any modifiers (thinkpad drivers).

- (minus sign)
Use a - sign at the beginning of a word to exclude all pages with that word. For example, you could enter:

+thinkpad +software -drivers

The results contain pages with thinkpad and software but not the word drivers.

Expanding your search with a wildcard Look for words that begin with the same letters by using an * (asterisk) as a wildcard. A wildcard search is useful for finding pages with words that have multiple endings. For example, you could enter: comput* The results contain pages with words that have the prefix comput, such as compute, computer, computing, computation, and computational.

In this context, asterisks can be used only at the end of a word or word fragment, not in the middle.