Pandia Plus Search Guide

Experienced searchers may go to the Pandia Plus Q-card

About Pandia Plus

Pandia Plus is a search directory. That is: You are not searching the Internet or the webpages as such when you are using the Pandia Plus search form. Instead you are searching the Open Directory database, which includes links to more than 2 million sites handpicked by over 32000 experts and enthusiasts form all over the world. In this way you are limiting your search to sites that the Open Directory editors thinks has the quality and relevance needed to be included in a directory of this kind.

Your search results will also include links to Pandia Plus' more than 320 000 subcategories, which often are good starting points for thematic browsing. Double-clicking on the number following the category field gets you only the sites in that category that actually match your query.

If you want to search larger parts of the World Wide Web, you should use one of the search engines listed on the Pandia Powersearch-page instead. You do not have to leave the Pandia Plus directory to do that, however. If you are not satisfied with the results Pandia Plus has given you, you can click on the metasearch link on bottom of the page. Your search will be transferred to the Pandia Metasearch Engine, without you having to enter the query again.

Simple Search

For a quick and simple search, just enter words you think must be present in the category or the page summary. Simple searches find entries that include all of the search terms. Search results are ranked and displayed 25 sites at a time. The sites that are displayed are grouped by their category. For example, a search on:

          elephants 

will return all the sites that have the word elephants in them. Searches with multiple terms will automatically insert an "and" between all the terms, so that only sites with all of the search words in them will be returned. For example, a search on

         golf clubs  

will only return sites that have both golf and clubs in the sites name and description. Sites on "tennis clubs" or "golf balls" will not be displayed (unless they also mention golf and clubs).

Phrase Search

Sometimes the order of the search terms matters. Using phrase searching can greatly reduce the number of sites that are matched by a search. For example if you searched for:

         "Tour de France" 

You would only get sites that had the three words: tour, de and France in them in that order.

[Read about phrase searching in the Goalgetter Tutorial].

Boolean Search

There are several Boolean operators to choose from, they are: OR, AND, and ANDNOT. You do not have to use capital letters when writing the operators. Note that ANDNOT is written as one word.

Terms linked by the AND operator will return only those sites that match all of the search terms linked by the AND operator. This is the default, if you don't use any boolean operators, then only those sites that contain at least one occurrence of each search term will be returned.

Terms linked by the OR operator will return those sites that match any of the search terms linked by OR. For example:

         grey OR gray AND parrot 

Terms linked by the ANDNOT operator will exclude all sites that match the search term following the ANDNOT. For example:

         random ANDNOT house 

will find sites about randomness, but exclude sites about the publisher, Random House.

[Read about Boolean searching in the Goalgetter Tutorial.]

Wildcard Search

The search can do some limited wildcarding - specificly, wildcard completion. This is useful when you are trying to match a term that may or may not be plural or might have one of several verb tenses. For example if you wanted to find sites that had to do with bicycling you might use the following search:

         Bicycl* 

This would match sites on Bicycling, Bicycle, and Bicycles.

The search does not support arbitrary wildcards, so searches on "*cycling" or "Arch*ology" will not work.

[Read about wildcard searching in the Goalgetter tutorial.]

Search Engine Maths

You can prefix search terms with "-" and "+" to force the exclusion or inclusion of that term. This is really just shorthand for using the ANDNOT and AND Boolean operators.

The following example will return all the sites on baseball, except those that mention "umpire."

         +baseball -umpire 

Note: You cannot begin a search with a "-" term. You must put some other search term first.

[Read about Search Engine Maths in the Goalgetter Tutorial.]

Complex Search

You can mix and match the above search methods to create very complex searches. This search will return all sites on Lego trains, but exclude all the links that mention Duplo:

         lego train* ANDNOT duplo 

This search will find references to racing, except those that are about racing cars or motorcycles.

         racing -auto -car -motorcycle -road -nascar