Tips for Searching the CMA Wiki¹

When most people hear the word “Wiki,” they typically think of the huge, internet spanning free encyclopedia labeled “The Wikipedia.” This Wikipedia is a vast electronic, searchable store of information accessible by anyone with an internet connection. What many people are unaware of is that there are hundreds of thousands of public and private databases of various sizes and purposes that use the same architecture for knowledge management, but that are not part of The Wikipedia. Because of the similar architecture, however, they are called Wikis.

CMA has such a Wiki on its website. Because the CMA Wiki is private (requires a user id and password), it is not searchable by the commercial search engines available on the public internet. It has its own search engine, MediaWiki, built in. Since the CMA MediaWiki search engine resides only on the CMA server, it has much more limited resources than, for example, Google with its huge server farms. Because of this, MediaWiki’s search capabilities are much more limited and it can search only the CMA Wiki data.

MediaWiki searches are case-insensitive; upper and lower case are ignored with regard to the search input. Words in the search box that are fewer than three characters are also ignored. Since the search input consists of whole words separated by spaces or punctuation marks, punctuation marks are ignored in the search itself.

Throughout this article, text that is in the color red indicates the literal text string input into the search box.

Operator	Explanation
search-term	This is an exact-match search; only hits with exactly the spelling provided will be returned. If more than one word is entered into the search box, all words must be present on a page for it to be returned as a hit. mcalister would return hits on all pages in the CMA Wiki that contained that spelling. john mcalister would return hits only for pages containing both words with that exact spelling, although the words would not need to be adjacent. Example: mcalister or john mcalister
"search term"	Enclosing two or more words in double-quotes will return hits for matches to the phrase exactly as entered. Example: “john son of malcolm”
*	Use wildcards to generalize exact words among the search terms (i.e., jona* will return jonas, jonathan, Jonah, etc.). Example: jona*

Tips for Google Searches²

Google Search is one of several commercial search engines available on the internet for collecting information across web sites. To take advantage of these instructions, make sure that you are using the Google search engine. Different browsers default to different search engines. Your search bar should say “Google” or display the Google logo. If it doesn’t, or if you are in doubt, type www.google.com into your browser’s URL field -- where you usually type a web site address you want to go to. (Throughout this article, text that is in the color red indicates the literal text string that should be entered into the search field.)

Most people have used Google Search on the public internet. Typically, users simply type a word or phrase into the search bar and wade through the resulting list of “hits.” This can result in a list that is quite long because this is the most general form of search. However, Google Search has much more powerful search capabilities that often go unrecognized. Below are some of Google’s most useful search operators that you can use to search the CMA and other public websites. (NOTE: The CMA Wiki is not a public website and uses a different search engine with different operators.) Google searches are case-insensitive; upper and lower case is ignored by the below search operators.

Operator	Explanation
search-term	Simply entering one or more words in the search bar is considered a “fuzzy” search; it will return hits containing these words, as well as similarly spelled words and synonyms (e.g., hits for mcalister might include mcalister, macalister, mcallister, mcallester). If multiple words are specified, there is an implicit “and” between the words (e.g., entering john mcalister – read john AND mcalister – would result in hits containing both the words john and mcalister (and similar spellings) on the same page but not necessarily adjacent to each other (e.g., Thomas McAlister, cousin of John Stewart). Example: mcalister or john mcalister
"search term"	Use double-quotes around each word or phrase to force an exact-match search. Use this to refine results for ambiguous searches, or to exclude similarly spelled words and synonyms when searching for specific words. “john mcalister” would return hits for pages containing the phrase john mcalister. Hits for “john” “mcalister” would include pages that contained both john and mcalister (and only that spelling) on the same page but not necessarily adjacent to each other. Example: “john mcalister” or “john” “mcalister”
OR	Search for X or Y. This will return results related to X or Y, or both. Note: The pipe (|) operator can also be used in place of “OR.” Examples: john OR mcalister or john | mcalister
AND	Search for X and Y. This will return only results related to both X and Y. Note: It doesn’t really make much difference for regular searches, as Google defaults to “AND” anyway. But it’s very useful when paired with other operators. Example: john AND mcalister
-	Exclude a term or phrase. If you enter -john mcalister, pages containing mcalister without john will be returned, but any pages containing both john and mcalister will not be returned. Example: -john mcalister
*	Acts as a wildcard and will match any word or phrase, but does not act to generalize a word (i.e., john * mcalister will work but john mcal* will not). Example: john * mcalister
()	Group multiple terms or search operators to control how the search is executed. Example: (john OR rebecca) mcalister
AROUND(X)	Proximity search. Find pages containing two words or phrases within X words of each other. For the example below, the words john and mcalister must be present in the content and no further than four words apart. Example: john AROUND(4) mcalister
define:	A dictionary built into Google, basically. This will display the meaning of a word in a card-like webpage. Example: define:patrimony
filetype:	Restrict results to those of a certain filetype (e.g., PDF, DOCX, TXT, PPT, etc.). Note: The ext: operator can also be used—the results are identical. Example: mcalister filetype:pdf or mcalister ext:pdf
site:	Limit search to a specific website. Example: macallister site:clanmcalister.com
intitle:	Find pages with a certain word (or words) in the title. In the example below, any results containing the word mcalister in the title tag will be returned. Example: intitle:mcalister
allintitle:	Similar to "intitle," but only results containing all of the specified words in the title tag will be returned. Example: allintitle:john mcalister
inurl:	Find pages with a certain word (or words) in the URL. For this example, any results containing the word mcalister in the URL will be returned. Example: inurl:mcalister
allinurl:	Similar to "inurl," but only results containing all of the specified words in the URL will be returned. Example: allinurl:clan mcalister
intext:	Find pages containing a certain word (or words) somewhere in the content. For this example, any results containing the word mcalister in the page content will be returned. Example: intext:mcalister
allintext:	Similar to "intext," but only results containing all of the specified words somewhere on the page will be returned. Example: allintext:clan mcalister
map:	Force Google to show map results for a locational search. Example: map:dundee
in	Convert one unit to another. Works with currencies, weights, temperatures, etc. Example: $329 in GBP
source:	Find news results from a certain source in Google News. Example: mcalister source:the_verge
_	Not exactly a search operator, but acts as a wildcard for Google Autocomplete. Example: apple CEO _ jobs

Examples Using Google Search Operators:

First, note that if you want to search only the CMA website, you should include the site: operator in the search terms. Otherwise, you will be searching the entire public internet. So, for example, if you wanted to find all pages on the CMA public website that contain the words “John” and “McAlister,” you could type into the Google search bar: site:clanmcalister.org “John” “McAlister”. The logical AND is assumed and the double-quotes ensure you have exact matches. However, you could also have hits on “John Franklin” and “Geraldine McAlister” because no relationship between the two words was specified, simply that they be on the same page.

Site:clanmcalister.org John McAlister, without the double quotes, could also get hits on pages containing “Johnny Franklin” and “Geraldine MacAllister” because, without double-quotes, similar but not necessarily exact spellings are also included.

Site:clanmcalister.org “McAlister” OR “MacAllister” would list all pages that contained either “McAlister” or “MacAllister” or both (exact spellings again because of the double-quotes).

If you wanted to find all pages containing the name “John McAlister” but perhaps with one or two middle names inserted, you could enter: site:clanmcalister.org “John” AROUND(2) “McAlister”. In this instance, the names “John” and “McAlister” must be separated by no more than two words (e.g., “John McAlister,” “John McBride McAlister,” “John Alexander McBride McAlister,” or possibly “McAlister son of John”).

As a final example, by using operator nesting with parentheses, it is possible to do quite complex searches. If you are looking for pages on John or Sara (or possibly Sarah) McAlister (or possibly MacAlister or possibly McAllister but not MacAllister), allowing for up to two middle names for both, you could enter: site:clanmcalister.org (“john” OR sara) AROUND(2) (mcalister -“macallister”). Google would find all pages containing either the literal spelling “John” or some version of the name “Sara” (e.g., Sara, Sarah, Sera) where those names were separated by no more than two words from some version of spelling for the name McAlister as long as that version was not “MacAllister.”