Search Tips

• Check spelling: Make sure search terms are spelled correctly. The search engine will attempt to find words that sound similar to your terms, but it is always best to verify that spelling is accurate.
  
  
• Use similar words: The more similar the words you use in a search, the more relevant the results you will get back.
      Example: environment, ecosystem, ecosphere, biosphere
  
  
• Use multiple words: Use multiple words when performing your search. The results returned will be more refined with several words rather than a single one. Keep in mind that relevant results are returned even if they don't contain all query terms.
      Example: agreement biological diversity
  
  
• Use appropriate capitalization: Capitalize proper nouns. Lowercase words will match any case. In the example below, "river" will return all documents containing the words river, River, and RIVER. Typing "River," however, will only return pages containing "River."
      Example: Eel River, NOT eel river
  
  
• Use quotation marks: Use quotation marks to find words which must appear adjacent to each other, as in "endangered species." Otherwise, the search results will include the word "habitat," "conservation," and "plan," but not necessarily in that order. Without quotation marks, the words may appear anywhere, and in any order, within a document.
      Example: "habitat conservation plan"
  
  
• Use plus (+) or minus (-) signs: 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 must be absent in the results.
      Example: + "Biodiversity Council"
  
  
• 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 (meta:), meta key words (keys:), or URL (url:). The field name should be in lowercase and immediately followed by a colon. There should be no spaces between the colon and the search term.
      Example: title:agenda
  
  
• Use field searches: Wildcard searched 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 and quotes for phrases, as well as the field search specifiers. For example, +wh* -se*ch will find all pages that have a word that starts with "wh" and that does not contain a word that starts with "se" and ends with "ch." And a search for "wh* are" will find the phrases "where are," "what are," "why are," etc.