One of the most useful features of News Rover is its ability to search through thousands of Usenet news messages and extract only those messages that match a specific search expression that you have specified. A News Rover search expression can be as simple as a word or two, or it can be as complex as you wish with and, or, not, and near operators and parentheses.

For example, suppose you are interested in buying a Ford Mustang automobile. You can create an Interest Group that searches through all forsale newsgroups searching for the word "Mustang". Or, if you are only interested in buying a 1965 model, you could use the search expression:

Mustang near 1965

When two or more words are specified in a search string separated by punctuation characters, they only match a message if the message contains the same words in the same order separated by punctuation characters. So, "Ford Mustant" would not match "Mustang Ford". If you use the and operator between two words, then a match will occur if a message contains both words regardless of their order or position in the message. The near operator is similar to and, but requires that there not be more than 8 other words between the two being compared. The or operator matches a message if either word is in the message.

For complex searches, you can use parentheses to specify sub-search expressions. For example, if you are interested in messages about planimeters, slide rules, Monroe calculators or Friden calculators, you could use this search expression:

planimeter or slide rule or
(Monroe near calculator) or
(Friden near calculator)

In addition to searching for messages that include certain words or phrases, News Rover allows you to exclude messages that contain certain words or phrases. You can do this either using the not operator or by specifying a separate Exclude expression that has the same form as the Include expression.

Being able to exclude messages that contain certain phrases can be very useful. For example, if someone is posting "spam" messages in newsgroups you frequent, you can use an Exclude expression with the poster's name or address to exclude all messages from that person. For example, here is an Exclude expression that will filter out many spam messages:

opportunity or money or http or 800 or 900 or adult or xxx