How can I limit my search results before I start?
Last updated on November 03, 2021
Knovel offers a Pre-filter Search Bar drop-down from the homepage which allows users to focus a search from the start. The drop-down offers users options to limit searches to a particular type of content, limit to a particular field, or find their way to special tools, such as Material Property Search.
By limiting results before entering a search query, the query has immediate limitations imposed on it which will decrease the size of the result set.
How
- On the homepage Search Bar, you will see a drop-down on the left of the search bar. Its default is 'All'. If you do not select anything from the drop-down, the search will be run without any limitations imposed.
- If you want to limit the search up front, choose the type of limitation you want to use:
- Search By
- Title
- Author
- Publisher
- Limit Results To
- Books and Chapters
- Databases
- Equations
- Graphs
- Tables
- Special Tools
- Material Property Search
- Enter your search terms.
- You are taken to the search results page where your limitation is applied to your results. Should you wish to change the limitation you applied, you can do it from the search results page.
Using the Search By pre-filter means you are specifying a particular field you want your query to be limited to. The options for pre-filtering include Title, Author, and Publisher. Your results will be presented with the field populated in the Advanced Search form.
The Search By pre-filter is like running an Advanced Search in that it looks for the search only in a particular field. It differs from Advanced Search in that you can only select one field to search (Advanced Search allows you to combine fields).
Once your results are presented on the Advanced Search form, you can add other terms to your query using other Advanced Search fields and/or the Free-text search box.
Using the Limit Results To pre-filter places limitations on the type of content returned for your search. Even if Knovel has results from various Content Types, you are indicating you are only interested in one type of content, and as a result, the search is limited to that Type.
Selecting 'Limit Results to Books and Chapters' means that Knovel will return results that match your query from both Books and Chapters. Should there be no Books for your query, but there are Chapters, we will return the Chapters, and vice versa.
Once your results are presented on the search results page, you see that the Content Type Facet Group on the left side of the page reflects your pre-filter selection. You may remove the pre-filter content type selection or expand the query to other types of content using the Facet refinement options.
In some cases, your "pre-filter Content Type limitation + query combination" may not return any results. If this is the case, you will be offered the opportunity to keep your query but remove the pre-filter, opening your query to all content types.
Selecting the Material Property Search from Special Tools takes the user directly into the Material Property Search page where a focused material, property, or material/property query can be built.
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