I’m needing some help regarding the set up of an effective search set. I would really appreciate it if someone has an idea how to do this.
I would like to set up a search set where I could find pages on the internet that would contain, as an example, Wal-Mart and a technology vendor. So, it could look like this:
“Wal-Mart NEAR/8 IBM”
Okay, that’s not that big of a deal. But, I want to kill about 30 birds with one stone. So, how could I effectlively do this:
"Wal-Mart NEAR/8 (IBM OR NCR OR Microsoft OR etc.)
As you can see, I’ve tried it the way that i"ve listed it above, but it doesn’t work. Any ideas?
As a practical matter it’s a good idea to hold queries down to about 10 search terms or less.
I did a quick Internet (Fast Scan) search for “Wal-Mart” NEAR/8 (IBM OR NCR OR Microsoft) and got 30 results and included results for all 3 companies named within the parentheses.
Try breaking your searches to include 4 or 5 of the “OR” companies. The searches will be quicker and shouldn’t choke the other servers or plugins being used. You can always combine and search the results in a DEVONthink Pro database.
To simplify subsequent runs if you plan scheduled searches, simply duplicate the search sets, creating a new one for each set of companies. Then you can run each set weekly, picking up any new pages that have been added in the interim. New results can then be added to the DA Archive and also sent over to your DEVONthink Pro database.
Thanks for that. I love DA and DT! It’s fun to get to know how to utilize the power better. The thought of breaking them up had crossed my mind, but I was trying to keep them consolidated. No big deal.
I guess I’ll just kill 5 birds with one stone, and throw six stones.
Not a bad compromise.
The primary search term sent to search engines is quite often limited (e.g. to 10 words) but the secondary search term (see Search Sets panel or Settings drawer of search windows) is unlimited.
Therefore one possibility is to use a more generic primary query and to use a secondary query for the complex matching.
In addition, you should put quotes around Wal-Mart - otherwise it’s treated as Wal BUT NOT Mart.
