The Essentials of Our Search Engine
Doing a search on our web site is easy. Simply type one or more search terms (the words or phrase that best describe the information you want to find) into the search box and hit the 'Enter' key or click on the Go/Search button.
In response, your search request produces a results page: a list of web pages related to your search terms, with the most relevant page appearing first, then the next, and so on.
Here are some basic tips to help you maximize the effectiveness of your search:
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Choosing the right search terms is the key to finding the information you need. Start with the obvious – if you're looking for general information on Lightgate, try Lightgate. But it's often advisable to use multiple search terms; if you're looking for pricing for Lightgate, you'll do better with LightGate pricing than with either pricing or Lightgate by themselves.
Our searches are NOT case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you type them, will be understood as lower case. For example, searches for carrier notifications, Carrier Notifications, and cArRiEr NoTiFiCaTiOnS will all return the same results.
By default, our search only returns pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include "and" between terms. Keep in mind that the order in which the terms are typed will affect the search results. To restrict a search further, just include more terms. For example, to get information on Lightgate pricing, simply type pricing Lightgate.
Our search ignores common words and characters such as "where" and "how", as well as certain single digits and single letters, because they tend to slow down your search without improving the results. Our search page will indicate if a common word has been excluded by displaying details on the results page below the search box. If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can include it by putting a "+" sign in front of it. (Be sure to include a space before the "+" sign.) Another method for doing this is conducting a phrase search, which simply means putting quotation marks around two or more words. Common words in a phrase search (e.g., "where are you") are included in the search. For example, to search for CEI, Plan 8, use:
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Our search now uses stemming technology. Thus, when appropriate, it will search not only for your search terms, but also for words that are similar to some or all of those terms. If you search for CCAS (Customer Change Activity Service), our search engine will also search and return results for CNA (Customer Name and Address Service) and other related variations of your terms that are included under the BellSouth Products & Services Customer Information Services category. Any variants of your terms that were searched for will be highlighted in the snippet of text accompanying each result.
Sometimes you'll only want results that include an exact phrase. In this case, simply put quotation marks around your search terms. Phrase searches are particularly effective if you're searching for proper names of BellSouth Applications ("CAFE"), or other related phrases ("ASR ordering, order validation, inquiry functions").
If your search term has more than one meaning (Tariff, for example, could refer to Tariff documents or Tariff Notifications) you can focus your search by putting a minus sign ("-") in front of words related to the meaning you want to avoid. For example, here's how you'd find pages about to view tariff documents for BellSouth's nine-state region, as well as FCC tariff documents, instead of tariff notifications: Note: when you include a negative term in your search, be sure to include a space before the minus sign.
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