MAFnet Searching Tips

| Simple Search | Advanced Search | Mathematical Search | Confining Searches | Smart Searching |

To search for any information, simply type in a sequence of words that define what you are looking for. The search engine will output a list of results, best results first. The Alkaline search engine used on MAFnet searches exact words and word heuristics (parts of words).

Simple Search

The simplest way to get searching is typing a word in lower case. Searching for light will find all pages containing light, lightning, delighted, etc. It will also find pages with Light and Lightning because simple searching is not case-sensitive.

More Advanced Searching

Under the area you type in your search terms there are a number of boxes to tick to help refine your search.

  • Search All Words- type in a sequence of words separated by spaces. With the "match all words" box ticked, searching for ricky blue will find all pages containing Ricky, tricky, blue, blues, etc. Page containing both words will be shown first in the results. If this box is not ticked, Alkaline will search all pages containing ANY of the words and producing best (most relevant) results first.
  • Case-Sensitive search can be enabled by using a single capital letter inside a word. For example, searching for Dairy let will find all pages containing Dairy and letter, but will not list pages with just dairy or Letter. Or you can tick the case sensitive box to force a search using the upper and lower case conditions of all the words of your query.
  • Entire words can be searched by using quotes. Searching for "net" will find pages containing net and Net, searching for "Net" will of course find only pages containing Net because of the capital N enabling the case-sensitive search. If you tick the whole words only box, the effect is similar;  farm will force a search for farm, but not farmer or farmgate. If you don't do this, you will be offered partial matches.

Mathematical or Boolean Searching

  • Boolean Searchallows to lookup for pages containing some word and not containing some other. To express the fact that a page must contain a word, a + sign must be placed in front of the word. To search for all pages not containing a word, a - sign should be used. For example, you can search +net -"Internet" which will show pages containing net, network, etc. only if they don't contain Internet. Note that searching for -word or +word -word will produce no results.
  • Refined Boolean Search can be done by mixing a Boolean expression with normal words. Searching +net +Bulletin tax will sort results showing pages containing net, Bulletin and optionally tax first.

Confining Searches

The Search engine offers very extensive opportunities to target your searches. The advanced search page has a number of areas or document types that you can confine your searching to. For example, if you search for cats, you will get over 6,000 references. If, however you are looking for the requirements to import a cat into New Zealand, you could tick the box labelled Animal Health & Welfare Standards. This takes the number of references down to the hundreds. If you want to import your cat from Australia, type in Australia, and tick the match all words and whole words only boxes to confine you search to pages about both Australia and cats (but not category), and the results are now down to a few dozen.

You may also confine you searches to various types of MAF publications - please not that these searches are more reliable if the match all words box is ticked (even if you are searching on just one word - it simply forces a search for a certain document type that may be in many parts of the site).

Searching By Date Last Modified

To search documents modified after or before a specified date add before: and/or after: to the search string followed by a valid date in the form DDMMYY (e.g. dog before:150599 which will output documents about dogs before 15/05/1999)

You can specify a finite time span with both both before and after, for example grass before:150699 after:010698 will return all documents about grass between these two dates.

Smart Meta Searching

Much of MAFnet is "tied" together with hidden links called meta-tags. You can experiment with using these tags for some very smart "Meta Searching" by specifying a meta tag followed by a colon. While most of these tags are meant for administration purposes, there are some that are likely to be of general interest and use, for example:

  • Searching by Author

Simply typing author:walker will produce documents specified as being authored by people named walker (or Walker).You can get refined:  author:walker author:morriss will produce documents written by Walker and Morriss. If you now tick both the match all words and tick the technical papers box, you will find the technical paper written by Walker and Morriss.

Note that author:+"walker" and +author:"walker" will produce same output. Searching author:"alan walker" is equivalent to author:"alan" author:"walker".

  • Searching by Business

If you know the MAF business that produced the information you are looking for you could try using the business tag

e.g. business:pol or business:biosecurity orbusiness:operations

  • Searching by Owner

If you have some idea of the person within MAF having responsibility for the information you seek, there is a possibility of locating it by using the owner  tag

e.g. owner:kettle or owner:mckenzie

  • Searching by Date

If you know when the information was published, you could use the DC.Date tag (DC indicates it is a Dublin Core tag) . Note this is different to the Searching By Date Last Modified facility above - often pages are modified or even created on the web after the official publishing date.

Searching on DC.Date:1996-12-23 would produce the documents published on 23rd December 1996 and  DC.Date:1996-12- then ticking  media releases would produce the press releases of December 1996

  • Searching by Abstract

MAFnet documents have an abstract - a summary of the document. It is sometimes an effective search strategy to search just the abstracts

e.g. abstract:goat or abstract:pesticide

  • Searching by Keyword

MAFnet has keywords in most of its documents, and this is potentially a very quick way to locate documents about a subject on a basis that have more "human input" than the number crunching approach of machine

e.g. keywords:pesticide

  • Searching by Title

Lightning fast, especially if you have an idea of the approximate title

e.g. DC.Title:Organic or DC.Title:milk

  • Searching by Section

If you want to confine your search to a concept, try a section search

e.g. section:pest

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