Searching

By using Search My Backflip you'll quickly and easily find specific pages in your directory. In the Search My Backflip box, simply type keywords from the Title, Description, URL or the text from actual Web page. Additionally, try the following advanced search methods to get extra-accurate results.

Basic Search Techniques

In the Search My Backflip box, simply type keywords from the Title, Description, URL, or text from the actual Web page to find the page(s) you are looking for. Typing more than one word tells Backflip to search for instances of either word. For example, typing salsa dancing will return pages with only the word salsa (such as a page with chips and salsa), only the word dancing (such as pages with swing dancing) and pages containing both words.

Capitalization
If you type a word that's not capitalized, then Backflip will find both uppercase and lowercase versions of the match. If a word is capitalized, then Backflip will match exact case only.

Example: Searching for Bill will find pages with Bill and Billing, but not pages with bill. Searching for bill will find pages with Bill, Billing, bill, and with billing.

The exception to this is in the advanced technique below of using quotes for exact phrases. If a word (or words) is in quotes, then Backflip will find both uppercase and lowercase versions of the pattern.

Searching for "Bill", in quotes, will find pages with Bill and pages with bill, but not pages with Billing or billing.

If you want to override the normal treatment of capitalization, precede the word with <case>.

Example: <case>bill will return pages with bill, and billing but not pages with Bill. <case>"Bill" will return pages with Bill, but not with bill.

Putting it all together: <case>Bill OR <case>Systems AND "Billing Systems" would return a page with Billing systems and a page with Billing Systems, but not a page with Systems Billing or a page with billing systems.

The word begins with...
If a word is not in quotes, Backflip will also return words that begin with that word.

Example: Searching for photo will bring up pages with photo and photography.

Advanced Search Techniques

Exact Phrases
For exact phrases, use quotes (" "). If you're looking for two or more words together, enter both words enclosed in quotes. Backflip will only return pages that contain that exact phrase.

Example: Typing "ski racing" -- in quotes -- would return a page with: I like ski racing, but not a page with: I like to ski and I like racing.

All the Words
For all of the words, regardless of position, use the term AND.

Example: If you're seeking a page about learning how to play flamenco guitar, try entering the following: guitar AND instruct AND flamenco. That search will result in a page that has all three words such as: We instruct how to play guitar and we specialize in flamenco.

Some of the Words
Use OR between words when you want results that contain one or more of the words.

Example: To find pages which contain the word guitar or the word music enter the following: guitar OR music. Actually, you could just enter: guitar music, which is the same as typing the OR, but the results may be ordered differently - see below.

How Do I Understand My Results?
Backflip returns matching pages from 'best to worst'. In other words, pages with the best match are listed first. Determining which pages are 'best' is a combination of frequency and exactness.

Frequency
Using the guitar AND instruct AND flamenco example above, a page with the word guitar twice, instruct four times, and flamenco once would be listed above a page with the word guitar twice, instruct twice and flamenco twice. This is because the total word count is higher (7) in the first page than the last page (6).

Exactness When conducting a Basic Search using multiple keywords, Backflip ranks pages containing all of the words above those containing one word multiple times. For example, if searching for salsa dancing, a page with salsa once and dancing once, would appear over pages that listed the word salsa five times.

An exception to this would be using the advanced syntax OR. When you use OR you tell Backflip to rank by total word count. Using the example of searching for guitar OR music, a page with guitar five times and music zero times (not found) would appear above a page with guitar once and the word music once.

What Doesn't Backflip Search?

Remember, Search My Backflip looks at the Title, Description, URL, and actual page contents. This makes it a very powerful tool to locate your information. In the vast majority of cases, Backflip can create the 'index' that makes the page contents searchable. However, there are some cases in which Backflip cannot 'read' the Web page. In these cases, only the Title, Description, and URL will be searched. Some of these limited instances are listed below:

• Frames: If a Web site uses frames, Backflip normally indexes all the frames and subframes. However, in some instances the site designers keep a constant URL for all pages on their site. In this case, Backflip will index only the 'main page' found at that URL.
• "Active Server Pages" (.asp): Backflip may not properly index pages that are 'dynamically' generated, depending on session context.
• "Binary Encoded Pages": If the Web page is an Acrobat document (.pdf), Word document (.doc), etc.
• Internal Pages: Pages contained on a computer that is not generally available via the Internet cannot be indexed by Backflip. For instance, an intranet page behind your company's firewall would not be indexed. Backflip would still search the Title, Description, and URL.

How Soon Are Pages Available to Search?