Search Tips

Use the following tips to improve the relevancy of search results.

Search a Specific Section of Pages

Title

  • A query starting with allintitle: will return results which contain all of the query words in the title. For instance, allintitle:personal mention will return only documents that have both "personal" and "mention" in the title.
  • A query starting with intitle: will return results which contain that query word in the title. For instance, intitle:personal mention will return  documents that mention the word "personal" in the title and "mention" anywhere in the document.

URL

  • A query starting with allinurl: will return  results which contain all of the query words in the URL. For instance, allintitle:personal mention will return only documents that have both "personal" and "mention" in the URL.
  • A query starting with inurl: will return  results which contain that query word in the URL. For instance, inurl:personal mention will return  documents that mention the word "personal" in the URL and "mention" anywhere in the document.

Combine Query Terms

  • By default, query terms generally have an AND relationship. That means both terms should be present in the results. A search request of graduate education is the same as a search request of graduate AND education. Just like a normal Google search, pages that do not include all words may also appear in search results.
  • Use OR to find pages that contain any query terms. A search of graduate OR education would return pages that contain either (or possibly both) graduate or education.
  • To search for an exact word or phrase, surround your query with double quotation marks e.g. "personal mention".
  • AND and OR are case-sensitive.

Supported Browsers

CMU's Web search is powered by Google Custom Search Engine (CSE) which supports the following browsers:

  • The current and previous version of Google Chrome
  • The current and previous version of Firefox
  • Internet Explorer 10 and 11
  • The current version of Microsoft Edge
  • The current and previous version of Safari

To ensure optimal functionality, make sure that JavaScript is enabled in your browser.

Pagination

  • Google Custom Search Engine returns a maximum of 100 results.
  • You may notice that the number of available pages changes as you navigate through the pager. To quickly serve results, CSE returns an estimated number of results. This estimate may not be accurate. As you navigate through the pager, the exact number of results is returned.