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Widening Search Scopes
If you end up with too few results, you can widen the scope of the search by:
Adding Alternative Words or Phrases to the Criteria:
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You can widen the scope of your search by adding alternative words and phrases to your search criteria. When you add alternative criteria separated by OR you increase the likelihood of finding documents that meet at least one of your criteria.
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For example, suppose you want to find press releases. You might start out your search with the phrase: press release. The search will then find documents containing the phrase press release (or the plural form releases).
You can then widen the search by adding the word announcement using the OR operator:
press release OR announcement
Now your search will find documents that have either the phrase press release or the word announcement in the index.
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Using Individual Words Instead of Phrases:
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You can widen your search by using individual words rather than phrases. For example, suppose you search for the phrase "news releases" but do not find what you need. You can increase your chances of locating the right document by searching for the words rather than the phrase.
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To do that, you would change the specification to read either:
news OR press releases which finds all documents that have at least one of those words
news AND press releases or simply product specification which finds all documents that have both of those words but not necessarily together
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Accounting for Different Spellings and Other Variations:
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Some words have more than one correct spelling. For example, labor is correct in the United States, but labour is correct in the United Kingdom. And sometimes those who create documents misspell the title or keywords. If your search does not find what you are looking for, including the gramatically stemmed variations of your search criteria, you can still widen your results lists to account for spelling variations and misspellings by typing parts of the words in your search criteria.
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For example, if you search for labor you will not find labour, even with the automatic stemming that the Indexing Service uses, but if you search for "labo" you will find both labor and labour.
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