Search for	Example	Results
A single word	`cat`	Topics that contain the word "cat". You will also find its grammatical variations, such as "cats".
A phrase. You can specify that the search results contain a specific phrase.	`"cat food"` (quotation marks)	Topics that contain the literal phrase "cat food" and all its grammatical variations. Without the quotation marks, the query is equivalent to specifying an OR operator, which finds topics with one of the individual words instead of the phrase.

Search for	Operator	Example
Two or more words in the same topic	`AND` `and` `+` (plus symbol) `&` (ampersand)	`cat AND dog` `"cat food"+milk` `"cat food"&"dog food"`
Either word in a topic	`OR` `or` `\|` (pipe)	`cat OR dog` `cat \| dog`
Topics that do not contain a specific word or phrase	`NOT` `not` `!` (exclamation point)	`NOT cat` `! dog`
Topics that contain one string and do not contain another	`^` (caret)	`cat ^ mouse`
A combination of search types	`( )` parentheses	`cat + (dog \| mouse)` `cat \| dog + (! mouse)`

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How IR Expert evaluates documents for relevance

IR Expert queries return results based on relevance to the query. To do this, IR Expert looks at each term used in an IR query and gives a ranking to the term, based on how often it appears in the stored documents.

A term found in many documents has a lower rank than a term found in a few documents. For example, if all of the incidents that customers report involve the Windows operating system, then the term “Window” is in almost every document and has a very small ranking.

After IR Expert assigns ranking, it gives each stored document a weight based on how many of the terms used in the query are in the document, and on how often a term is in the document. A document that contains a term twice has a greater weight than a document that contains the term once. Next, it compares the terms in the document with the terms in the query to see if there is a “phrase” match. If so, IR Expert gives that document a higher weight. Finally, IR Expert considers the most recently updated document to be the most relevant.

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