In FSTA Direct free text searches - usually encountered in Easy Search and Guided Search, but also found in Advanced Search fields that use the CONTAINS operator - certain commonly occurring words (so-called noise or stop words) are excluded in the processing of indexes for searching. This means that these words are ignored in these types of searches and may return unexpected or no results.

This restriction also applies to free-text phrase searches that include noise words.

For example, a search 'n-3' (e.g. in Easy Search or as CONTAINS(AF,'n-3')) fails because both 'n' and '3' are noise words. This limitation can be avoided by reconstructing the search in Advanced Search to take advantage of the LIKE operator; the Advanced Search AF Like '* n-3 *' (note the use of wild cards and spaces) will find occurrences of the term in the database.

The noise words excluded by FSTA Direct include:

0	1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9
$	about	after	all	also
an	and	another	any	are
as	at	be	because	been
before	being	between	both	but
by	came	can	come	could
did	do	each	for	from
get	got	has	had	he
have	her	here	him	himself
his	how	if	in	into
is	it	like	make	many
me	might	more	most	much
must	my	never	now	of
on	only	or	other	our
out	over	said	same	see
should	since	some	still	such
take	than	that	the	their
them	then	there	these	they
this	those	through	to	too
under	up	very	was	way
we	well	were	what	where
which	while	who	with	would
you	your	a	b	c
d	e	g	h	i
j	k	l	m	n
o	p	q	r	s
t	u	v	w	x
y	z