Partial Matching

I was searching for the manual page for Bash. I did not remember the hostname for the Arch manual pages. So, I searched with a partial name. But, Mojeek did not recognize this.

Does Mojeek support partial matches for a hostname?

For example, should the following

bash inurl:man.arch

match man.archlinux.org?

We don’t support partial matches for hostnames, and it’s not a very easy thing to do right (or as common as some might think). Examples like expertsexchange can be used to demonstrate this.

There are other methods which can be used to pick up these variations which don’t necessitate splitting the words, so sometimes we do (or seem to) pick up these.

This being said, using inurl will always make it 100% strict, which is going to be the right call most of the time in our eyes.

3 Likes

i keep forgetting about inurl: and instead find myself using site:, so thanks for the reminder!

oh, btw @mike, $ man bash but i suspect you knew that

1 Like

@itsMe Me too. I’m aware of the existence of search operators but didn’t know that inurl: can be used that way. Perhaps Mojeek can adjust the examples given in their support page to those that can better demonstrate how these powerful features can be maximized?

I’ll put down a task to look back at that page and see if there’s anything that could be done better :pray:

In case you haven’t seen it there’s also a blog which goes through some of this in a bit more detail than the support page: A Guide to Mojeek Operators | Mojeek Blog

I’ve actually excitedly read it before, but like the support page, it only demonstrates the “how” part, not the “why” part. The site and date operators are intuitive, for searching within a specific website or a range of date, respectively. Additionally, date operators are useful either for finding the latest articles about the keyword, or filtering more recent articles if you’re searching for an old article.

But how about “intext”? On what instances is “intext” better than just typing the keyword? Or “inanchor”? Is it for finding websites with links that contain a specific word? (I think it would also help to replace “anchor text”, a tech jargon, with a layman’s term.)

Moreover, I suggest to put the list of search operators on the search page itself, maybe with an icon that opens the list when hovered or clicked. That would make the search operators more convenient and accessible, that people can consider trying them out when they get stuck on a certain search, instead of going back and forth on the support page.

How about a FAQ or knowledge base for things like search operators? Rather than having the users eye wander around paragraphs these would quickly focus the user on each operator: Q: How do I use “intext” in searches? Etc.

1 Like

Ah, this is difficult but I will think on it. Given the wide range of reasons why you might use an operator in a search, it’s a complex thing to do to attempt to distill this into a ‘this is for x’ type statement. On top of that, being too prescriptive could stymie people using things in other ways. This is why currently the pages say what they do, but don’t have much further.

I came across this ahrefs piece which has something similar but for G’s operators. Doing things which make the more-advanced functionality more comprehensible and accessible is always a plus, so it’s a good suggestion for sure.

I totally agree about numerous possible uses of these operators, so I don’t really mean to distill it, but rather, to enumerate examples on how it can be used. Something like “Here are some examples of how this operator can be used:”. This could help jumpstart people’s imagination and creativity in using search operators, especially now, with so many search engines not having them, the skill with search operators is rather a lost art.

And yeah, it would be quite difficult to think of these example by yourselves, but how about asking help from the community? There are some users like @mike who seem to utilize them often, some of them might be willing to contribute. Personally, I found the search operators useful for feedback, as the site and inurl operators can determine whether the problem stems from a certain page not being indexed yet.

Thanks for this article! This is really enlightening, giving me some ideas of how to use some search operators, and their outsized impact in the SEO industry. Btw I think it would also be nice to have a parenthesis () operator in Mojeek based from its demonstrated utility in that article.

1 Like

With regard to examples, Josh and I discussed this a year ago without coming to a conclusion (It was in my ‘image gamma’ feedback email from January 2023).


Your other option is that Discourse allows wiki posts. Once your account is at the appropriate Trust Level, you can create a wiki post and invite others to edit it.


A third option is Mojeek might opt to create a ‘Docs’ repository on GitHub and allow editing there: similar to Microsoft.

2 Likes