Use the NEAR operator for unordered proximity searches.

That is, term1 can appear within num words before or after term2 in the document.

For example, if a user specifies:

"Mark Twain" NEAR/8 Hartford

Then both of these sentences will be considered matches:

"Mark Twain wrote some of his best books in Hartford."
 "Tour the Hartford, Connecticut home where Mark Twain lived
 and worked from 1874 to 1891."

Phrases are treated as one word. In the first sentence, for example, the software starts counting with the word "wrote" (not "Twain").