Operator

Table of operators for legal search engines

Advanced Legal Research, UNSW Faculty of Law
1 August 2006
Graham Greenleaf, UNSW Faculty of Law

See Notes and Footnotes below for some important explanations of the Table.

Operator meaning	LIIs[1]	LawLex	LxNxAU	Lawbook	CCH	Google
If no connector used between terms	‘or’ assumed	‘and’ assumed				as if ‘and’ assumed [default]
Either or both terms (‘or’)	or	or	or	or	or	OR
Both terms anywhere in document (‘and’)	and	[default]	and	and	N/A	[default] (no ‘and’)
Term not in document (‘not’)	and not	and not	and not	not	N/A	minus sign
Term 1 within n words of term 2, in either order	w/n /n/	N/A	w/n	“term1 term2” @ n	and [within 20 words]	N/A
Term 1 precedes term 2 by n words or less	pre/n	N/A	pre/n	“term1 term2”/n	N/A	N/A
Term 1 within 50 words of term 2	near	N/A	w/50	“term1 term2”@50	N/A	N/A
Terms in same paragraph	N/A	N/A	w/p	N/A	N/A	N/A
Truncation (multiple)[2]	stem*	stem*	stem!	stem*	stem*	N/A[3]
Truncation (single )	stem?	N/A		stem?	stem?	N/A
Wildcard (embedded)	!	N/A	*	?	* or ?	N/A
Automated synonyms	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	~term
Phrases	variable[4]	double quotes	no quotes	double quotes	double quotes	double quotes
Searching common words	double quotes					+term
Change order of operators	( )			( )	( )	N/A
Fields – terms within a field	field (term)	N/A	field (term)	Forms provided	N/A	N/A
Domain – terms within a domain	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	site:domain

Notes:

This Table covers most of the important search engines used for Australian legal research but not all of them. Some operators are not included, particularly those only used by one search engine, or alternative operators (where only the simplest is usually given).

‘[default]’ means do not use any operator – leave a blank space and this operator is used in default (eg for Google a blank space between search terms means that the ‘and’ operator is used)

‘N/A’ means that the functions of this operator are not available with this search engine.

If operators are put in capitals (eg OR for Google) then you must use capitals for the operator to work

The following words in the table below are not part of the operators:

‘n’ – a user-specified number
‘term’ – a user-specified search term
‘stem’ – a user-speficied root of a search term (eg ‘negligen’)
‘field’ – a user-specified name of a field (eg ‘title’, ‘catchwords’)
‘domain’ – a user-specified internet domain or sub-domain (eg ‘.au’ for websites from the Australia domain, ‘.gov.au’ for Australian government websites)

Footnotes:

[1] LIIs – These operators work for the following LIIs that use the SINO search engine: AustLII, HKLII, PacLII, NZLII, BAILII, SAFLII, CyLaw, CommonLII, and WorldLII.

[2] Truncation (or ‘wildcards’) - all words starting with the word stem; may be followed by 1 or more characters (usual truncation); special forms require stem followed only by one letter (‘1 letter’), or where one variable letter is embedded within a word (‘embedded’) (eg ‘licen!e’, ‘authori!e’)

[3] Google has a form of truncation but it does not work in the same way

[4] Phrases on LIIs – Boolean searches on LIIs do not require any quote marks around phrases. However, and searches from AustLII’s front page do require double quotes for phrases, or Autosearch assumes the search is ‘Any of these words’.