A leading plus sign + indicates that this word must be present.

A leading minus sign - indicates that this word must not be present.

By default (when neither + nor + is specified) the word is optional, but the rows that contain it are rated higher.

The operators > and < are used to change a word's contribution to the relevance value that is assigned to a row. The > operator increases the contribution and the < operator decreases it.

The asterisk * serves as the truncation (or wildcard) operator. Unlike the other operators, it should be appended to the word to be affected. Words match if they begin with the word preceding the * operator.

A phrase that is enclosed within double quote " " characters matches only records that contain the phrase literally, as it was typed.