Using the Site Search Engine

Overview

There is a site search engine available on many pages throughout the site, including all of them where MP3 and Cover links are displayed. It will appear like the one above. This engine is not nearly so extensive as the commerical search engines like Google and Bing, but should be able to locate most items on the RagPiano.com site with little trouble.

Use

The basic search engine will work on a specific word or phrase. The default mode on words entered for search is ALL (or AND), which means the search will bring back only pages where ALL of the terms in the search text are found in a page. Just enter the text, such as | Scott Joplin |, and the search will return all relevant results with both Scott and Joplin on the page. The default view is for 20 results per page.

For more refined results, such as on a full title or name or phrase, you may include the text inside double quotation marks - ["this phrase"] - to delineate each set of words. For example, a search on | "Scott Joplin" | will only return pages that has that phrase contained within. This is the equivalent of using Exact Phrase (shown below).

The Options link drops down an additional section that alows you to better customize the search. You may choose a mode from Match to search for the exact phrase (which does the same thing as surrounding the search string with double quotation marks), ALL of the words in your search string, or results that include ANY of the search words. The Results Per Page control allows you to determine how many results will appear at one time, dividing them up into the appropriate number of pages.

Notes

The Help search engine will only return results for Help content for the RagPiano.com site.

Spelling is paramount in searches in order to get a match. Hopefully a near-match element will be added in the future as time permits. If the search engine can't fully match your spelling, and it is wrong, you will not get proper or desired results. In these cases, use Google or a similar search engine to look for results on a broader scale. You can search on | site:ragpiano.com | followed by your search string.

For use of this and other search engines, and since "Where can I locate..." is among my most Frequently Asked Questions, I have included a five minute answer on this with many tips that can make you a top-notch searcher within that time, getting back only the most relevant results for what you want.