SiteSeeker and special queries

3/12/2013

Kunskapsdatabasen, Sökning

SiteSeeker offers many special queries for different purposes. Here follows a summary of these:

URLs and links

URL arguments in search queries with url: and link: may be written either with or without the hostname (i.e. the name of the server). If you do not supply a host name, all indexed servers are searched for a match.

Note that the interface may not allow special queries! Use the template search page which is accessible through the link My Search page in SiteSeeker Admin to test if it works, should you encounter problems.

Search query
Example
Result
url: url:specialqueries.html
indexed page with specified URL
url: url:s* indexed pages with a URL beginning with the supplied string
link: link:specialqueries.html
indexed pages that link to a page with a given URL
link: link:s* indexed pages that link to pages with a URL beginning with the supplied string
link: link:www.w3.org indexed pages which link to another website, set servername only
link:mailto link:mailto indexed pages which contain mailto-links (it is not possible to set a specific recipient)
link:dead link:dead indexed pages that have dead internal links
meta:linkdepth meta:linkdepth = 1 pages with link depth 1

Titles and content

Search query Example Result
title:none title:none
all pages without a title
title:bad title:bad all pages with a poor title
title:real title:real all pages where the original title is displayed in the results list.
title:headline title:headline all pages where the headline of the page is used as title in the results list.
title:text title:text all pages where text from the beginning of the page is used as title in the results list.
title:meta title:meta all pages where a meta attribute is used as title in the results list.
title:link title:link all pages where a link text is used as title in the results list.
title:filename title:filename all pages where the file name is used as title in the results list
intitle:car
intitle:car
all pages of which the title contains the word "car"
navigation:identified navigation:identified all pages where SiteSeeker has automatically detected navigational sections (e.g. menus)
content:code content:code all pages which contains a lot of source code
content:hasattachment content:hasattachment all pages which have attachments
content:isattachment content:isattachment all pages which are attachments

Filtering and sorting

Search query Example Result
filetype: filetype:html
filetype:pdf
All pages of a given file type, valid values: html, pdf, doc, xls, ppt, text and rtf
sort: search term sort:title
search term sort:date
search term sort:date sort:title
search term sort:reverse:date
search term sort:category
search term sort:relevance (search term sort:random)
hits on search terms sorted in alphabetical order by titles, by date, by date then title if date is equal, in reverse date order, by category, by relevancy, or randomly.
lang: search term
lang:sv
search term
lang:en
hits on search terms in the chosen language (in this case swedish or english) – note that ISO-language codes are to be used (not country codes).

Metadata and categories

Search query Example Result
meta: (untyped)
meta:name:value
meta:name:"multiple words"
all pages which have meta data with attribute name name and value value (note that you cannot search on a phrase)
meta: (built in)
meta:linkdepth > 1 all pages which have a linkdepth greater than 1
meta:category:
meta:category:Search
all pages in the category Search
meta:category: meta:category:Design_website
all pages in the category Design website (note that spaces are replaced with underscore)
meta:category: meta:category:Main subject; Traffic_&_Urban planning
all pages in the category Traffic & Urban planning in the category group Main subject (category group and category are separated by semicolon)
author: author:Johan
author:"Johan Carlberger"
all pages where Johan or Johan Carlberger is the author

Read more about how you search within multiple categories at the same time.

Diagnostic queries

Search query Example Result
siteseeker:version siteseeker:version The version number of the SiteSeeker server that answers a request
conversion:failed conversion:failed All non-HTML documents that cannot be read by SiteSeeker (i.e. not converted into searchable text)
siteseeker:best-bets siteseeker:best-bets list of all best bets
date:none date:none All pages and documents without a Last-Modified date
date:meta date:meta all pages and documents where a meta tag has been used for publication or modification date
siteseeker:meta siteseeker:meta information about indexed meta data

Conceal search terms with the prefix hidden:

There is a specific prefix, hidden which "conceals" search terms. This method can be of great use when you set a query extension (in SiteSeeker for EPiServer for example).

The possibility to search by using diagnostic queries can be turned off in SiteSeeker Admin.

Examples of special queries

By using different special queries, you can for example display:

Dead links in pages from a certain writer

If for a web page has the meta tag <meta name="author" content="John Smith"> and also has a dead link, the search query link:dead author:"John Smith" display this page as a result..

Which indexed pages that links to a certain page

With the special query link:URL, for example. link:www.location.com/product/index.html or just link:product/index.html you can easily find out which indexed pages that links to a certain page. The search engine will display all indexed pages that contains links to this page. You can also use * in the end of the search query to see which pages that links to a group of pages, for example .link:product/*. All pages with links to any of the pages in the catalogue products/ are displayed in the results list.