Advanced Searching

Most searches are a question typed into a field, and that is all they need to be. Some questions are harder. You want one engine for this search only, or two searches compared side by side, or results from one website, or the exact words you typed and nothing else. You want more pages from every engine, or you want one engine to carry more weight than another. Each of those has a control, and this page goes through them.

Shortcuts

Type !g before a search and it goes straight to Google. Every engine has a shortcut. Start your search with one and Pelorus runs that single engine, drops the shortcut from the query, and relabels the search button so you see what will happen before you tap. A shortcut works on any engine, whether or not it is turned on.

!u runs a Unified Search once, and !all runs every engine once. A preset can have a shortcut of its own.

You can change any shortcut in Settings > Search > Search Engines: tap an engine and edit its Bang field. Two engines cannot share one, and a custom engine you add has no shortcut until you give it one.

Compare with

Ask two questions at once. Type them separated by a vertical bar, such as coffee | tea, or choose Compare with… from the Pelorus button and Pelorus fills in the bar for you. The result is one card in three sections: the pages both searches turned up, and the pages only one of them did. A comparison runs up to four engines, whatever you have turned on, because two searches at once is the heaviest thing the app does.

Site Search

Type site:example.com and your words to search inside one site. Pelorus passes the operator to the engines that support it and leaves out the engines that do not, rather than sending them a query they would misread. Site-scoped Unified Search is part of Pelorus Unlimited.

Similar Pages

Search for Similar Pages, in the Pelorus button, finds pages like the one you are reading.

The Time Filter

The clock chip above the results limits every engine at once to the past day, week, month, or year, or to a custom range. Any Time is the default.

Interpreted and Verbatim

Most search boxes change what you typed without telling you. They drop filler words and match synonyms, which usually helps and sometimes hides the exact thing you asked for. The chip beside the result filter switches between the two behaviors for a search, and Default Query Handling under Settings > Search > Unified Search sets which one every search starts with.

• Interpreted lets each engine drop filler words and match synonyms, the way most search boxes behave.
• Verbatim sends your words unchanged. It is more precise, and more likely to come back empty from academic and archive sources, which match words literally.

The Explain sheet on the Unified card lists what each engine was sent.

Search Depth and Search Deeper

Unified Search asks every engine the same question and merges the answers. It does that in rounds. One round is one page of results from every engine feeding the Unified list. Asking every engine for the same number of pages is what keeps the comparison fair. If one engine's results went deeper than the others, the agreement counts would start describing which engine you happened to look at rather than what the engines found.

Search Depth is in Settings > Search > Unified Search. It sets how many rounds Pelorus fetches before showing you anything. The range is 1 to 3, and the default is 1. More rounds sharpen the counts from the start, and each one is another request to every engine, so the search takes longer before the first result appears.

Search Deeper is at the foot of the Unified card. It asks every engine for its next page, once, when you press it. There is no limit on how many times you can press it. New results are added below what you are already reading, and nothing you can see moves. Agreement counts update across the whole list, including rows already on screen. A bar in the left margin marks a row that would move if the list were rebuilt. When enough has changed, Re-Rank Results rebuilds the list in true order and takes you back to the top.

For the curious Why Paging an Engine's Card Never Changes the Unified List

Depth has to be symmetric. If paging one engine's card added its second page to the pool, that engine would have twenty results in the ranking while every other engine had ten, and the agreement counts would start reflecting where you happened to click rather than what the indexes independently found. So a card's own pages never feed the Unified list. The cards are where you look. Unified is what Pelorus concluded.

A result found deep in an engine's list is weaker evidence than one that engine put near the top, and Pelorus scores it that way. Agreement still matters more. One more index finding a page roughly doubles its score, while thirty places of depth costs about a third. The count you read on a result does not change with any of this. It still says how many indexes found the page, because that is a fact you can check.

Engine Weights

Some engines you trust more than others for the questions you ask. Engine Weights, under Settings > Search > Unified Search, gives each engine a say from a quarter to double the normal amount. The Unified list re-ranks without re-running the search.

A weight changes order only. It never changes how many indexes a result shows, which engines are listed for it, or where each ranked it. Those numbers are the record of what was found, and a weight cannot make the app misstate its evidence. Engine weights are part of Pelorus Unlimited.

Domain Rules

Boost, bury, and block decide how a site is treated in every Unified Search from then on. Touch and hold a result to set one, or manage the three lists under Settings > Search > Unified Search. Working with Search Results explains what each does.

Showing Only the Unified Card

If you only ever read the Unified list, Show Only Unified Results under Settings > Search > Unified Search hides the individual engine cards during a Unified Search. The Cards button at the left of the toolbar still lists them and brings any of them back.

Everything in the Unified Search Settings