The simplest possible search expression is a simple word:

Obama

matches any text containing ‘Obama’. Note that it does not match texts containing ‘Obamacare’ – i.e. the match must be with a whole word.

Any sequence of alphanumerical character is a valid search word, with the exception of the reserved words ‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’, ‘before’, ‘near’ (see below). Non-alphanumeric characters like punctuation or symbols cannot be used directly in a search word, they need to be placed in a search phrase (see below).