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A search query is constructed from one or more of the following elements.

1. Boolean Queries e.g. free (wave OR midi) NOT classical
2. Phrase Searches e.g. "Port Phillip Planning Scheme"
3. Approximate Phrase Searches e.g. { election campaign speech }
4. Wildcard Searches e.g. { plan* or walk* }
5. Qualifiers, like country, date, title, and many more

Combined Example:
  (health enforcement) or (traffic engineer) {parking officer} "Port Phillip"

OK, let me start searching.

Query Language Features

Boolean Queries

A boolean query is one which uses basic logic operators to combine keywords, and is specified using + or AND, - or NOT, | or OR. If none of these are given, AND is assumed. The symbolic forms may or may not be surrounded by spaces; the word forms must be have spaces. Queries are interpreted with AND having higher precendence than OR, so Planning or permit form is interpreted as Planning or (permit and form)

Examples:

• Search for Planning and permit: Planning permit
  or equivalently: Planning AND permit
  or: Planning + permit
  or: +Planning +permit
• Search for Planning but not permit: Planning NOT permit
  or equivalently: Planning - permit
  or: Planning AND NOT permit
  or: Planning -permit
  or +Planning -permit
• Search for Planning or form, providing permit is in the same document: (Planning OR form) AND permit
  or: (Planning | form) permit
  or: +Planning +permit | +form +permit

Phrase Searches

A phrase search is specified by delimiting the phrase in double quotes.

Examples:

• Search for the phrase Planning permit form: "Planning permit form". This will match Planning permit form and Planning, permit form and Planning permit, form, but not Planning was the most popular permit form.

Approximate Phrase Queries

An approximate phrase query, or proximity query, requires the words to be within about 200 words of each other. A proximity search is specified by curly braces.

Examples:

• The search {Planning permit form} will match Planning permit form and Planning applications require a permit form.

Wilcard Queries

A wildcard query is a way to search for variations of a given word. Two wildcard operators are available:

• ? matches any single character
• * matches any sequence of characters.

Because there is the potential for a search term to match a very large number of words, there are limits on how many matching terms will be returned. By default, there must be at least three fixed adjacent characters given in the query term or the query will be rejected, and the first 20 matching words will be used.

Examples:

• The search Plan* will match planning, planner, plans, planet, etc
• cl??n will match clean and clown

Qualifiers

A qualifier places additional constraints on the search. These are summarised in the table below. Several qualifiers may be combined with other types of queries.

Note: Qualifiers are best entered using the advanced search page.

Qualifiers in the Query Language

Field	Explanation	Example
text	Query terms are contained in the body of the text	text:("The quick" -fox)
type	Results are limited to the specified document type	type:pdf type:html type:msword
title	Query terms are contained in the title	title:south melbourne central
meta-description	Query terms are contained in the META description field	meta-description:(planning permit)
meta-keywords	Query terms are contained in the META keywords field	meta-keywords:(planning permit)
sound	Find words that sound like the query terms. This can be useful if you're not sure of the exact spelling of a word.	sound:counsel
link	Find documents that link to the specified URL	link:/permits_online.html
stem	Find words with the same stem. Our search engine uses a plural stemmer, so that when you search for "man" it also finds instances of "men" and vice-versa. Another way to search on a word stem is to use wildcards, e.g. job? or danc* Normally, stem-based expansion will be turned on for all queries, so there is no need to use the stem: qualifier.	stem:job

Qualifiers and other syntax may be combined. For example, search for the word "Planning" or "permit" in the title or Description meta tags: title,meta-description,meta-DC.description:(Planning or permit).

Date Format

A search can be constrained to apply to pages that were created between a range of dates.

A date can be specified as part of the search string using alphanumeric characters. However the query language parser will only accept date specifications that conform to the following rules.

Date Range Syntax

date: ( < date1 > date2 )

where date1 and date2 are of the form:

dd mmm yyyy

for example, 26 Jan 2005

Either one or both of the less-than `<' and greater-than `>' symbols is needed, but if both are provided they can be given in any order. The following examples might help explain this:

Examples of valid date ranges

Date Range	"Find only documents created ..."
date: (> 1 Jan 1990)	... since January 1990
date:(<30 Nov 1999)	... before November 30, 1999
date: ( > 01 Jan 2000 < 31 Dec 2000 )	... during the year 2000
date: ( < 31 Dec 2000 > 1 Jan 2000 )	... during the year 2000

Tips, Hints and Suggestions

Check your brackets, braces and quotation marks to ensure they are "balanced".

Ensure dates are written in English, with a 2 digit day ranging from 00 through to 31, a 3 letter month abbreviation, and a 4-digit year.