How to Search

This column does not have a single author, but is submitted by a number of experts that contribute regularly to our news source.  Some are in Canada, some in the UK and one is in the far east

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The Saugeen and Kincardine Times have two search engines that allow the reader to look up one or more of the thousands of files that we have in our archives.  Even though we do extensive hyperlinks, we can't include all the links.  You can find what interests you by using our Search Page.  The search engines are from FreeFind and the other from Google. 

These engines search only the Canadian Community News' offerings, i.e. Kincardine Times and Saugeen Times and other future additions.

Sometimes these engines return TOO MUCH.  If you know a trick, you can really help yourself.  Let's use an example with the FreeFind engine and search for all references to Chantry Island.  Try it yourself.

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21/08/2009 06:46 PM

If you enter Chantry Island in the Search Engine, you will get 261 page references to those two words at the time of writing.  Lots of references are for the pictures of the Lighthouse and Island.  Looking at the results shows that most of the references are for the index of the pictures, which is fine, but if you just want the articles, then enter the following:

Chantry Island -index

and that will exclude all the file folders that just include pictures of Chantry and will leave you with 121 files and get you directly to all the articles that mention Chantry Island.  You are excluding the index of pictures.

Please notice the minus sign. That's what does the job.  You can exclude more words, if you like.  Let's do something more.  Search first for Prom.  You see that you will get 48 items including all the index folders too at the time of writing. 

If you try Prom -index, you will get 21 references.  Suppose you wanted to exclude Kincardine's Prom.  You could search for:

Prom -index -Kincardine

and you will get only 6 references.

Of course you can use this with the Google engine that we use too.  You can also use it for a World Wide Web search using Google. 

Thanks and good surfing.....