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Complex searches

Combining search operators is a powerful way to restrict search results and really drill down through the data to find what you want. Here are some examples of complex searches created by combining operators:

Note

All the links in the following examples open search results in the data.world open data community.

Grouping of search terms

It is also possible to combine different operators in a complex search, but you need to clearly group the parts of the search string that go with each operator or the search engine will not process your request correctly.

For example the search string bee AND pesticide OR colony AND collapse could be parsed in a few of different ways including:

  • (bee AND pesticide) OR (colony AND collapse) - all results that either have bee and pesticide or have colony and collapse.

  • bee AND (pesticide OR colony) AND collapse - all results that have bee and either pesticide or colony and also have collapse.

  • bee AND (pesticide OR (colony AND collapse)) - all results that have bee and either pesticide or both colony and collapse.

The search string bee AND pesticide OR colony AND collapse will not return predictable results.

Searching for exact matches

Searching for exact matches in complex searches also requires careful construction of the search string to get the desired results. For example if you wanted to search for everything that had to do with either a university degree or a high school diploma the following search strings would give you completely different results:

  • university degree OR high school diploma - will not return desired results because of the lack of grouping.

  • (university degree) OR (high school diploma) - all results have either the terms university and degree (together or separate in any order or location), or the terms high, school, and diploma (also together or separate in any order or location)

  • "university degree" OR "high school diploma" - all results have either the string "university degree" or the string "high school diploma" somewhere in them.