Submitting Queries and Viewing Results

1. Entering Search Phrase.
2. Selecting the Search Language.
3. Number of Locations to visit.
4. Time Limit.
5. Font to display queries.
6. Selecting a Search Method to use

1. Entering Search Phrase

Having read the Introduction section, you should now have a basic understanding how to enter and launch search queries. During your several first sessions with SSSpider we recommend that you use the application default settings, which have been optimized for beginners. To create and execute a new query, first, enter it in the field "Search Phrase". After it, click the New Search image using the left mouse button, then drag the image and drop it onto a desired Search Set in the upper left pane of the SSSpider window (for example, onto the set "Search in Entire Web"):

Once you drop the query this way, SSSpider will start searching and after some time, will automatically display a report containing the most relevant quotations from the selected pages.

Be aware that when entering queries, SSSpider accepts natural language inquiries in any of nearly 40 languages it supports. Even though SSSpider technology compensates for many spelling/grammar errors, pay careful attention to use correct spelling and grammar under the Search Phrase column. Just type phrases which are most likely to be included in documents being searched. It is usually not necessary to include English words like "the", "and", or "a" as SSSpider typically ignores them while searching. The more words you specify in your query (e.g. 5 or more), the more reliable your search will be. Use capital letters where necessary.

2. Selecting the Search Language

SSSpider is able to support searches in a large number of languages (see SSSuite Multi-Language Support for details). If you need to find information in a language other than English, select the language of your choice for one or several queries. Furthermore, smart language detecting algorithms of SSSpider perform automatic conversion of the documents being processed into the selected coding table. It is especially required for those languages, which have several coding tables, such as Japanese or Russian. For example, by selecting Japanese SHIFT JIS for a query language, you are instructing SSSpider to convert all incoming documents into SHIFT JIS (Japanese Industrial Standard) encoding table; this conversion is performed even for those Web sites, which publish their pages in Japanese EUC, Japanese New-JIS, Japanese Old-JIS and Japanese NEC-JIS encoding. So, for these languages you should select the coding table in which you enter queries; after this the required conversion is automatically done be SSSpider. Go to SSSpider Preferences to make your language the default one for all new queries.

3. Locations to visit.

SSSpider gives you the option of specifying how many locations or different Web pages you would like the program to visit. Enter this value in the Locations to Visit field. This field is automatically filled in with the default value.

Both Time Limit and Locations to Visit are very important fields. These fields affect both the search quality as well as the time required for SSSpider to process your queries. The more locations (Web pages) SSSpider visits while searching, the better results you are likely to obtain. The trade-off for better searches is the more time that is required to complete them. An empty value in this field indicates no restriction on the number of locations to be visited during the search.

See also: Editing SSSpider Options

4. Time limit.

The Time Limit field allows you to control how long you would like SSSpider to spend searching. If you want to no time limit and would like SSSpider to continue working until the required number of documents have been downloaded, simply enter zero in this field. The time limit for searches can be adjusted to reflect certain conditions, for example the speed of your Internet connection, the speed with which some of the popular search engines and sites SSSpider visits, respond. Setting this value too low will not give SSSpider enough time to find the requested number of documents and the resulting report will not contain enough information. If the searches you perform are stopped due to the time limit being exceeded, increase the value of this field until you find a duration that is suitable.

5. Font to display queries.

Press the "Font" button to select a desired font, pitch and size to display your queries:

Selecting font settings

6. Selecting a Search Method to use

To find paragraphs which match your Search Phrase, SSSpider offers a number of different search methods, namely:

  1. The "Subject search" method is capable of selecting paragraphs, in which your search phrase might be altered, modified, or even misspelled. This method is especially useful when searching for information you are just getting familiar with. This method accepts natural queries (entering something like "how can I rent a car in Italy" is OK), so it is the most powerful and the convenient one.
    Despite this fact, in a number of cases selecting one of the following Literal Search methods SSSpider also provides you with, may be more preferable. For example, when you are looking for occurrences of a particular person's name, geographical location, or/and number or numbers.

  2. The literal search method "All words in same order ignore case" selects documents containing all of the words in your phrase following each other and separated by one or several spaces or/and line breaks. For example, "Kryloff Technologies" is matched to:
    a) "  Kryloff        Technologies  ",
    b) "KRYLOFF (end of line)
       TECHNOLOGIES    ", etc., but
    c) not to "Kryloff Technology".
    To match the words "Technology" and "Technologies", use the Subject Search method described above.
  3. The literal search method "Entire pattern ignore case" selects documents containing your search phrase as you type it in (including leading and trailing spaces, special characters, etc.). For example, "Kryloff Technologies" gets matched to just "Kryloff Technologies", "KRYLOFF technologies", but not to "KRYLOFF   (two or more spaces or line breaks)   Technologies".
  4. The literal search method "All words from the phrase ignore case" allows finding documents that contain just all words in your Search Phrase. You may enter only some part of the words. As an example, the search phrase "Kryl Tech" will be matched to "Kryloff Technologies"; also selected will be any other documents containing, for example, the words "Kryloff" and "Technical", "Kryloff" and "Technology", (anywhere in the text or document title), etc.
  5. The literal search method "At least one word ignore case" selects documents containing at least one (any) word you have entered into your search phrase. For example, issuing the query "Kryl Tech" will cause SSSpider to select documents which contain either "Kryloff" or "Technologies", or both as well as "Technology", "Technical", etc.

    All methods described above (including the "Subject Search" one) are case insensitive: the patterns "Kryloff", "KRYLOFF" and "kryloff" are considered to be the same. The following four methods make distinction between uppercase and lowercase characters when searching for occurrences of your search terms; the rest of functionality of these methods has been just described above in this section:

  6. The literal search method "All words in the same order match case" makes distinction between capital (uppercase) and small (lowercase) characters. See also: "All words in same order ignore case".
  7. The literal search method "Entire pattern match case" selects documents which contain your phrase bodily (as you type it in) without any changes. See also, "Entire pattern ignore case" described above.
  8. The literal search method "All words from the phrase match case" is identical to the method "All words from the phrase ignore case" described above except for the fact that it makes distinction between capital and small characters.
  9. The literal search method "At least one word match case" is also similar to "At least one word ignore case", but it treats capital and small letters as absolutely different ones and does not match them to each other (even if they represent the same sound in the language of your choice).