Helpanswers.com - Searching Tips

help with helpanswers - tips on searching

Helpanswers.com is a large collection of information, all easily accessible with our search engine. Finding relevant answers to your computer-related questions quickly involves understanding the search engine interface.

Start by clicking on

at the top of any page at Helpanswers.com.

Then, type your question in the box, like this:
ask here

or, type in a bunch of words that are related to the answer you seek:
ask here

When you're done typing, press the

button.

That should be enough to answer most questions. However, to enhance your search, try some of the following:

While the Helpanswers knowledge base (our own gigantic collection of answers) has a lot of information, we do have the capability to search other places. Just use any of the available tabs above the search box to choose another place from which to search:

The Computer Dictionary has definitions for nearly any computer term you can throw at it, and the Computer Address Book has contact information for every conceivable computer company.

You can also modify your search with the following options:

Match: Any - use this to tell Helpanswers to find answers that fit any of your words. This provides a large number of results.

Match: All - use this to limit the search results to only those answers which match every word you've typed. This provides fewer results, but they may be more relevant.

Match: Boolean - boolean searches are different from the other two. By using a special language, you can usually zero-in on exactly what you want. For example, a boolean search for "(network AND macintosh) NOT windows" will return all documents containing both "network" and "macintosh," as long as they don't contain "windows." Note the use of the parenthesis and the NOT and AND operators.

Format: Short - when Helpanswers displays all of the possible answers to your question, you will see only the answer title and a rating. The rating (in stars) tells you how close Helpanswers thinks a particular answer matches your question.

Format: Long - the long format shows everything the short format shows, plus a brief excerpt of each answer.

Hits per page: - whenever your question matches a large number of answers, the answers are split up onto several pages. This setting tells Helpanswers how many results you want on each page. Use the tabs at the bottom of each page to switch between pages. There can be up to ten (10) pages, each with up to one hundred (100) answers - that's 1,000 results!

If you can't find an answer to your question, don't hesitate to ask us. We'll do our best to tackle anything you throw our way. We also greatly appreciate your feedback, which helps us improve this service for everyone.

Here are some helpful tips and details on our search engine that will help improve your results:

Words of fewer than three letters are not indexed. So, a search for "3D" won't return any results, but "ISA" will.

Common words, such as IT, IS, A, AND, and OR are not indexed.

Leave out words that don't specifically pertain to your question, and that may bring up irrelevant results. For example, a search for "slow network performance" will return fewer, more relevant results than "why is my brother's network so slow?"

Helpanswers automatically searches for all forms of each of your search words, so make sure to use the simplest form for the widest range of results. For example, search for "network" instead of "networks" or "networking."