Using the search facility to search this site

Making Queries

There are simple search facilities for the whole site, for books and for our own publications and resources. In addition, there is an advanced search facility for the whole site.

You can form queries without using a complicated query language. Here are some suggestions to help you get the best results.

Check spelling

Make sure your search terms are spelled correctly. This site is written in international English so you will find organisation rather than organization! The advanced search has a Sound-Alike facility which will attempt to find words that sound similar to your search terms, but it's always best to try to spell the search terms correctly. If in doubt, use duplicate spellings.

Use multiple words

If you want to narrow your search, the first thing you should try is simply to use more words in your query. The greater the detail you provide, the better the search engine will be able to find precisely what you are looking for. For example, typing “our free service” will return more relevant results than typing just “service”. Relevant results will be returned even if they don't contain all query words.

Use similar words

The more similar words you use in a search, the more relevant your results will be.

Use appropriate capitalisation

Capitalise proper nouns, and remember that lower-case words will match any case. For example, typing “search” will return all documents containing the words search, Search, and SEARCH. Typing “Search”, however, will instruct the search engine to look only for the capitalised word.

Use quotation marks

Use quotation marks to find words which must appear adjacent to each other, for example, “our pledge to you”. Otherwise, the search results will include the word our, pledge, to, and the word you, but not necessarily in that order. The words may appear anywhere, and in any order, within the document.

Note: if you are using the Advanced Search Form with radio buttons for “any,” “all,” and “phrase,” then quotes can only be used when the “any” radio button is selected. Quotes are ignored if the “all” or “phrase” radio buttons are selected.

Use plus (+) or minus (-)

Use a plus sign when your search term or phrase must appear in the search results. Use a minus sign to indicate undesirable term(s). The plus sign tells the search engine that a certain word or phrase is required in the search results, and a minus sign indicates that a word or phrase must be absent in the search results.

Note: A phrase must be contained within quotation marks. Leave no spaces between the plus or minus sign and the term.

Note: if you are using the Advanced Search Form with radio buttons for “any,” “all,” and “phrase,” then plus and minus can only be used when the “any” radio button is selected. Plus and minus are ignored if the “all” or “phrase” radio buttons are selected.

Use field searches

Field searches allow you to create specific searches for words that appear in a specific part of a document. A field search can be performed on body text (body:), title text (title:), alt text (alt:), meta description (desc:), meta key words (keys:), URL (url:) or meta target key words (target:). The field name should be in lower-case and immediately followed by a colon. There should be no spaces between the colon and the search term.

Note: The field searches can only be followed by a word or phrase. Phrases must be contained within quotation marks.

Note: if you are using the Advanced Search Form with a list box for the field name, then field names can only be entered before a word or phrase when the “any” option is selected. Specific field names are ignored if any other Advanced Search Form field is selected in the list box.

Use wildcards

Wildcard searches can expand the number of matches for a particular request. The * character is used as the wildcard character.

For instance, searching for wh* will find the words what, why, when, whether, and any other word that starts with wh. Searching for *her* will find the words here, whether, together, gathering, and any other word that contains her anywhere in the word.

Wildcards may be combined with the standard plus (+) and minus (-) modifiers, quotes for phrases, as well as the field search specifiers. +wh* -se*ch will find all pages which have a word that starts with wh and which does not contain a word that starts with se and ends with ch. "wh* are" will find the phrases where are, what are, why are, etc.