Selects documents containing the specified search terms within close proximity to each other. Document scores are calculated based on the relative number of words between search terms. For example, if the search expression includes two words, and those words occur next to each other in a document (so that the region size is two words long), then the score assigned to that document is 100. Thus, the document with the smallest possible region containing all search terms always receives the highest score. As search terms appear further apart, the score drops toward zero. A document receives a zero score only if it does not contain all search terms.
The NEAR
operator is similar to the other proximity
operators in the sense that the search words you enter must be found
within close proximity of one another. However, unlike other proximity
operators, the NEAR
operator calculates relative proximity
and assigns scores based on its calculations.
To retrieve relevance-ranked documents that contain stemmed variations of the words "war" and "peace" within close proximity to each other, you can enter the following:
war <NEAR> peace<NEAR>(war, peace)