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Tips for Searching
The Basic Search
To enter a query, type in a few descriptive words and press the Enter key or click the Search button for a list of relevant results.
The search uses sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search.
Note: Encrypted, viewable PDF documents are converted to HTML for indexing; however, the HTML is not displayed.
Spelling
A single spelling suggestion is returned with the results for queries where the spell checker has detected a possible spelling mistake.
The spell checker feature is context sensitive. For example, if the query submitted is "gail divers," "gail devers" is suggested as an alternative query. However, "scuba divers" would not return an alternate query suggestion.
Note: Currently, the spell checker supports only US English.
Synonyms
Synonyms are other words that have the same or similar meanings. They are displayed as "You could also try..." on the results page.
Sorting by Date
The Sort by Date feature sorts and presents your search results based on date. The date of each file is returned in the results. Results that do not contain dates are displayed at the end, sorted by relevance.
Automatic "and" Queries
By default, the search only returns pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include "and" between terms. For example, to search for engineering product specification documents, enter:
To broaden or restrict the search, include fewer or more terms.
"OR" Searches
The search supports the logical "OR" operator. To retrieve pages that include either word A or word B, use an uppercase "OR" between terms. For example, to search for an office in either London or Paris, enter:
See Your Search Terms in the Results
Every search result lists one or more excerpts from the web page to display how your search terms are used in context on that page. In the excerpt, your search terms are displayed in bold text so that you can quickly determine if that result is from a page you want to visit.
Does Capitalization Matter?
Searches are not case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you enter them, are understood as lower case. For example, searches for "george washington," "George Washington," and "George washington" all return the same results.
Does The Search Use Stemming?
To provide the most accurate results, the search does not use "stemming" or support "wildcard" searches. Rather, the search looks for exactly the words that you enter into the search box.
For example, searching for "airlin" or "airlin*" will not yield "airline" or "airlines.". If in doubt, try both forms, for example: "airline" and "airlines."
Refining Your Search
Since the search only returns web pages that contain all of the words in your query, refining or narrowing your search is as simple as adding more words to the search terms you have already entered. The refined query returns a specific subset of the pages that were returned by your original broad query.
Excluding Words
You can exclude a word from your search by putting a minus sign ("-") immediately in front of the term you want to exclude. Make sure you include a space before the minus sign.
For example, the search:
will return pages about bass that do not contain the word "music."
Phrase Searches
You can search for phrases by adding quotation marks. Words enclosed in double quotes ("like this") appear together in all returned documents. Phrase searches using quotation marks are useful when searching for famous sayings or specific names.
Certain characters serve as phrase connectors. Phrase connectors work like quotes because they join your search words in the same way double quotes join your search words. For example, the search:
is treated as a phrase search even though the search words are not enclosed in double quotes. The search recognizes hyphens, slashes, periods, equal signs, and apostrophes as phrase connectors.
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