The search box that is on every page of PCWorld.com functions as a simple search. In any search box on the site you can use any of the operators described in the table at the right of this page, so you can construct fairly extensive search-term strings from any page of the site. If you want to limit your search to one section of PCWorld.com or limit it to a specific date range, use the Advanced Search page.

First, check for typos or try another spelling. If you're sure the words are spelled correctly, but you're not sure about the capitalization, try all lowercase letters. Try a synonym or a generic equivalent, such as laser printer rather than LaserJet.

When you enter more than one word, your results include all articles containing any of those words. The "best" matches--those containing two or more of the words--appear at the top of the list, so start there. If timeliness is important, click Sort by Date to see the most recent articles at the top instead. To weed out irrelevant results, click Search These Results, enter additional search terms, and click Search.

If you're searching for the name of a person, product, or company, capitalizing it correctly will exclude irrelevant results. If you're not sure of the correct capitalization, entering the name in lowercase will give you what you're looking for—but you may get a lot of extraneous results as well.

When using multiple capitalized terms, be sure to separate those that shouldn’t go together with commas. For example, enter Hewlett-Packard, HP to find all articles that mention Hewlett-Packard, even by its acronym. Omitting the comma will cause you to search (in vain) for "Hewlett-Packard HP."

You don’t have to use both plural and singular in your string of search terms. The search engine uses a technique called "stemming," which looks for the root word of search terms. So searches for printer and printers yield the same results, and a search for printing yields the same results plus articles in which printing is mentioned specifically.

You can refine your search in many ways. One is to search within the original results from the Advanced Search page. Another is to use one or more operators or the advanced search options to make your search more specific.

Designate phrases: Use quotation marks ("complete phrase") or the Boolean operator ADJ to narrow the results to articles that mention the phrase as a whole, and exclude those that mention the words individually. For example, a search for "Windows NT" would give more targeted results than one for Windows NT, since the latter would yield all articles on any version of Windows plus those on NT.

Require two or more terms: Using the + (plus sign) or the Boolean operator AND narrows the results to articles in which all the designated words or phrases appear. For instance, to find out about color laser printers without getting irrelevant articles on ink-jet and monochrome laser printers, the most effective search string would be "laser printer" +color.

Exclude one or more terms: Using the – (minus sign) or the Boolean operator NOT excludes specific terms from your search. It allows you to find, for example, articles on color laser printers from any manufacturer except Hewlett-Packard by entering "laser printer" +color -Hewlett-Packard, -HP.

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