| Ricci Street
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This is the slow but totally thorough way to search the text of Ricci Street -- including the student webs at Parkside Plaza but not the Ground Zero Bistro forums. Search only the Bistro forums and archives.
You can search from here or you can return to the Ricci Street Search Bureau. There, you'll be able to search Google's database for only Ricci Street pages. The Google search is very good and extremely fast, but it may not be as thorough as the slow search above. Google's database can be up to a month out of date. If you have questions about seaching Google, you should check their tips.
The rules I wrote into Ricci Street's search function are based on Altavista's query syntax. A look at their Search Tips may prove useful.
If you got too many or too few, you may want to re-search by adding or omitting search terms.
If you use more than one search term, you'll get pages that have
either term. You may precede each term, including the first, with the
standard Boolean operators and, not, or
or. Altavista's + and - shorthand notation works, too. 
On the list of results, or terms are called optional, and terms are called required, and not terms are called forbidden. I'd be happy to discuss other names for them.
To group several terms, use quotation marks. For example, "Father Ricci" (quotation marks included) would not match Father Matteo Ricci met with Emperor Wu because of the Matteo between Father and Ricci. Without quotes, however, the sentence would match.
Boolean operators can also act within quotations: a search for +the +Chinese not "the Chinese" would match only those documents where the and Chinese appear separately.
If a search term has at least one capital letter, like ricCI, the search will be case sensitive with respect to that word. Only documents containing ricCI will be found. On the other hand, lowercase terms like ricci will match Ricci, RICCI, or ricCI.
These are called string searches. A search for in will turn up only that word, not bin, inside, or acquaintance. To perform a string search, preface your term with the dollar sign. A query on \$in would find in as well as bin, inside, and acquaintance.
note on wildcard searches
Including the asterisk in your query will return a list of all files, and that's its only function.
How to Search the
World Wide Web: A Tutorial and Guide for Beginners
Tutorial: Guide to
Effective Searching of the Internet
Ricci
Street's Internet Searching
To learn everything you need to know about search engines, you should read all the material at Search Engine Watch.
The large commercial sites such as Google, Altavista, Excite, and Lycos compare the keywords you submit to the index of the database of pages their robots have brought back. The bot has already done its work and is out there doing it again for the next update. Meanwhile, the database is stored in many large hard drives. It can take a couple of moments to collect the results, sometimes called hits. The search engine also ranks the results and displays them, often with banner ads relevant to the topic. That is, if you search for Cancun, you're likely to see a banner ad for an airline or Travelocity.
The Ricci Street Search Bureau doesn't use a robot and a special index. Ricci Street is small enough for a Perl script, which scans the whole site and still quickly returns a sorted list of matches. (And no ads!)
In addition to simple matching of words from the page's title and text, the Ricci Street Search Bureau searches meta tags such as keywords and description. The matches are also weighted by relevance before they display on your monitor.
All the terms you submit, whether they produce matches or not, get saved. I can feed the terms back into the keywords to make the searches more useful.
Only you can define relevance. There is no way to automate it. Each search engine determines relevance a little differently. Knowing how it ranks pages will help you choose search terms. If exactly what you're looking for is displayed on the first page, congratulations!
For the Ricci Street Search Bureau ...
one point
a search term in the text
and headers
two pointsa search term in the filename, title,
or META description
four pointsa search term in the META keywords
The pages are ranked from highest to lowest point totals. I'd be happy to discuss adjustments to this weighting system.
This system for logical comparison was first described by George Boole (1815 - 1864). A Boolean expression is constructed by joining terms together with three special operators:
OR - at least one term must be matched
AND -
all terms must be matched
NOT -
the first term must match and the second term must not match
The default value is or. A search for Ricci China maps will return pages which contain at least one of the three terms.
A search for and Ricci and China and maps will return only those documents which contain all three search terms.
A search for Ricci not China will return all documents which contain the word Ricci except those documents which also contain the word China.
Altavista's shorthand notation works, too. A search for +Ricci +China +maps will return the same documents as the and search. A search for Ricci -China will return the same documents as the not search.
Note: What happens when Boolean operators are the only term or the last term? Not and or return no files if they aren't followed by a real search term. And returns all files when it is the final or only term.
Got a tip? Have you discovered a good way for using the Ricci Street Search Bureau?
Share it with others. If your tip seems useful to others, I'll add it to this page and acknowledge your contribution.
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