U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission
SEC Seal
Home | Previous Page
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission

Using the Simple Search Mode:
Overview

An "operator" represents logic to be applied to a search element, where a search element consists of a combination of search terms and operators. This logic defines the qualifications a document must meet to be retrieved. Many operators are available, and they can be classified by their type, as follows:


Evidence Operators

Evidence operators can be used to specify either a basic word search or an intelligent word search. A basic word search finds documents that contain only the word or words specified in the query. An intelligent word search expands the query terms to create an expanded word list so that the search returns documents that contain variations of the query terms. For example, the <thesaurus> operator selects documents containing the word specified, as well as its synonyms.

Documents retrieved using evidence operators are not relevance-ranked unless you use the <many> modifier. Refer to <many> for more information. The following table briefly describes each evidence operator; see the Operator Reference for more detailed descriptions.

Operator Name Description
<stem> Expands the search to include the word you enter and its variations.
<thesaurus> Expands the search to include the word you enter and its synonyms.
<typo/n> Expands the search to include the word you enter plus words that are similar to the query term. This operator performs "approximate pattern matching" to identify similar words.
<wildcard> Matches wildcard characters included in search strings. Certain characters automatically indicate a wildcard specification.
<word> Performs a basic word search, selecting documents that include one or more instances of the specific word you enter.

 

Return to Top of Page | Go to Search Overview | Go to EDGAR Search Page
Go to Website Search Page



Proximity Operators

Proximity operators specify the relative location of specific words in the document; that is, specified words must be in the same phrase, paragraph, or sentence for a document to be retrieved. In the case of the <near> and <near/>N operators, retrieved documents are relevance-ranked based on the proximity of the specified words. When proximity operators are nested, the ones with the broadest scope should be used first; that is, phrases or individual words can appear within <sentence> or <paragraph> operators, and <sentence> operators can appear within <paragraph> operators. The following table briefly describes each proximity operator; see the Operator Reference for more detailed descriptions.

Operator Name Description
<in> Selects documents that contain specified values in one or more document zones. A document zone represents a region of a document, such as the document's summary, date, or body text. The <in> operator can be qualified with the <when> operator, to search for a term only within the one or more zones upon which certain conditions have been placed.
<near> Selects documents containing specified search terms, where the closer the search terms are within a document, the higher the document's score.
<near/n> Selects documents containing two or more search terms within N number of words of each other, where N is an integer up to 1000. The closer the search terms are within a document, the higher the document's score.
<paragraph> Selects documents that include all of the search elements you specify within the same paragraph.
<phrase> Selects documents that include a phrase you specify. A phrase is a grouping of two or more words that occur in a specific order.
<sentence> Selects documents that include all of the words you specify within the same sentence.

 

Return to Top of Page | Go to Search Overview | Go to EDGAR Search Page
Go to Website Search Page



Relational Operators

Relational operators search document fields (such as <author>) that have been defined in the collection. These operators perform a filtering function by selecting documents that contain specified field values. The fields that are used with relational operators can contain alphanumeric characters. Documents retrieved using relational operators are not relevance-ranked, and you cannot use the <many> modifier with relational operators.

A number of relational operators are available for numeric and date comparisons, including the following: = (equals), > (greater than), >= (greater than or equal to), < (less than), <= (less than or equal to).

The following table briefly describes the relational operators are available for text comparisons; see the Operator Reference for more detailed descriptions.

Operator Name Description
<contains> Selects documents by matching the word or phrase you specify with the values stored in a specific document field. Documents are selected only if the search elements specified appear in the same sequential and contiguous order in the field value.
<ends> Selects documents by matching the character string you specify with the ending characters of the values stored in a specific document field.
<matches> Selects documents by matching the character string you specify with values stored in a specific document field. Documents are selected only if the search elements specified match the field value exactly. If a partial match is found, a document is not selected.
<starts> Selects documents by matching the character string you specify with the starting characters of the values stored in a specific document field.
<substring> Selects documents by matching the character string you specify with a portion of the strings of the values stored in a specific document field.

 

Return to Top of Page | Go to Search Overview | Go to EDGAR Search Page
Go to Website Search Page



Concept Operators

Concept operators combine the meaning of search elements to identify a concept in a document. Documents retrieved using concept operators are relevance ranked. The following table briefly describes each concept operator; see the Operator Reference for more detailed descriptions.

Operator Name Description
and Selects documents that contain all of the search elements you specify.
<accrue> Selects documents that include at least one of the search elements you specify. The more search elements that are present, the higher the score will be.
or Selects documents that show evidence of at least one of the search elements you specify.

 

Return to Top of Page | Go to Search Overview | Go to EDGAR Search Page
Go to Website Search Page



Modifiers

Modifiers are used in conjunction with operators to change the standard behavior of an operator in some way. The following table briefly describes each modifier; see the Modifier Reference for more detailed descriptions.

Operator Name Description
<case> Performs a case-sensitive search.
<many> Incorporates the density of search words in the calculation of the relevance-ranked score.
not Excludes documents containing the words or phrases.
<order> Specifies the order in which search elements much occur in the document.

 

Return to Top of Page | Go to Search Overview | Go to EDGAR Search Page
Go to Website Search Page





http://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/simplesearch.htm


Modified: 10/17/2001
https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/simplesearch.htm
www.sec.gov
crawl=CC-MAIN-2018-30
15307
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:RHJJWXVU5IMXKUKWLHS6V6MAM67XGE52
<urn:uuid:8601a087-baee-4315-b42f-1ca54146f479>
2018-07-21T19:10:52Z
23.46.56.25
text/html
sha1:DKN3NDPQ2M7KYAUQEKWHFYLBP52VYNGW
<urn:uuid:1c6bcae3-fa1e-4a97-8d9b-6a2f80eb7742>
https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/simplesearch.htm
response
<urn:uuid:da7179f6-2766-4b95-af6c-be07438aa287>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-69-223-92.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2018-30
operator: Common Crawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for July 2018
publisher: Common Crawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf