SearchHippo does supports limited phrase types, phrase matches are attempted for you on combinations of words you enter. The phrase matching engine can sometimes produce different results and listing order for the same words entered in different orders, so be sure to use the order that makes sense. (i.e. "fast car", not "car fast").

SearchHippo ignores case and treats both upper and lower case characters the same.

Logic
SearchHippo will automatically search for all the terms you enter. As the algorithm executes, some terms may be automatically relaxed (a broadening effect while maintaining query relevance). To narrow a search, enter more terms, or to broaden a search, enter fewer terms. Words such as "AND" and "OR" are taken literally to appear on the page. SearchHippo selectively enforces "stop words" (small common words such as "the" and "a" based on content context. For example, consider a search for the Shakespeare text: "to be or not to be". Google, Inktomi, and many other search engines yield irrelevant results, while SearchHippo yields the exact pages one would expect.

URLs
You can quickly determine if a url has been indexed by our spider by simply by entering the entire url, including the "http://" piece, or search for a particular domain by just entering the domain.

Domain Restrictive Searches
To restrict a search to a domain, enter /dom:xxxxx followed by the rest of your keywords. For example, to get canadian sites with wine, enter /dom:ca wine to the search like this example.

You can narrow things down further in domains. For example, to get a list of sites at UC Riverside related to physics, enter /dom:ucr.edu physics like this example.

Image Searches
SearchHippo's image search is very simple at this point, and pages returned merely contain references to the image specified. To search for an image, enter /img:xxxx where the xxx is what you want an image of. For example, /img:eagle in this example, we find sites containing pictures of eagles.

Combinations
The above tags can be combined. For example, we can search for pictures of eagles, but only in sites in ontario canada with this example by entering /dom:on.ca /img:eagle.

Not the whole net
Lastly, keep in mind that SearchHippo does not try to index the entire internet. For more information on our techniques, see our About page. Information on submitted listings and common questions can be found in our FAQ.