Pandia Powersearch Help

Please note that the metasearch engine you find on the Pandia Powersearch page is not the same as find elsewhere on Pandia. The Powersearch engine makes room for more advanced searching.

Advanced / Boolean Syntax

Pandia Powersearch supports all popular range of Boolean syntax. Below are the details of currently supported options. You can also use this information to make a Search-Help page for your search engine.

NOTE, that Advanced/Boolean syntax will override usual 'all', 'any', 'phrase' settings passed through Form-Input Name match.

A) Phrase Search ("")
Double-Quoted queries/Keywords will be treated as a PHRASE.
Example: "computer software"
will always try to match the Exact query/text as entered.

B) AND Search ( + )
Putting a '+' (plus sign) will make sure that this word MUST be matched.
Example: +computer +software
will always try to make sure that both words are matched.

C) NOT/Exclude Search ( - )
Putting a '-' (minus sign) will make sure that this word must NOT be matched.
Example: +computer -software
will always try to fetch documents that contain the word 'computer' BUT does NOT contain the word 'software'.

D) OR Search
Putting 'OR' between words will force an 'ANY WORD' matching.
Example: computer OR software
will find documents that contain at least any of these words.

E) AND Search ( AND )
AND Search can also be invoked using 'AND'. This is same as using '+'.
Example: computer AND software
will try to fetch documents containing both the words 'computer' and 'software'.

F) NOT/Exclude Search ( NOT )
This is same as using '-'.
Example: computer NOT software
will try to fetch documents containing the word 'computer' BUT not 'software'.

IMPORTANT: Boolean syntax 'AND', 'OR' and 'NOT' are case insensitive and CAN BE USED AS UPPER-CASE OR LOWER-CASE LETTERS. This means 'AND' and 'and' are the same Boolean connector. The same way 'OR' and 'or' are the same connectors.

See Pandia Goalgetter for more help on using "search engine maths". Dual Search Mechanism

Pandia Powersearch has a Dual-Search Mechanism built-in. This means, it can automatically handle a natural language based input query as well as traditional 'Keyword' based inputs. As a result, you may search using 'Keywords' OR simply by typing-in a Question. The search engine will automatically process the search request as necessary. See below for a clearer example:

Keywords based:
books cheap

Question based:
Where can I find cheap books?
Show me the best sites for cheap books

Multilingual Query

Pandia Powersearch can now handle multilingual natural language based inputs in 7 most popular languages. You can choose to ask your questions either in English OR any other language listed below.

Currently supported Languages suitable for Question based query inputs: Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.

Safe Search

The Pandia Powersearch engine has built-in support for Safe Searching. Just tick off the Family Filter box to filter out offensive language. Please note though that no software program is perferct. We cannot guarantee that nothing will slip through!