Searching Hints and Tips

How to search

To conduct a search please enter the keywords you would like to search for into the search box and press the find button. The search will return results from within One Big Database that contain all of your non common keywords.

Common words

The search will ignore common keywords such as 'where' or 'how' as these don't often improve returned results. If you need to force a common word to be included please add a plus symbol in front of it like this: '+where'

Keyword stemming

We use a keyword stemming technique to return appropriate results. A search for the term 'management' would be reduced to 'manag' this would then return results for the terms 'managing' and 'manage' etc. If you would like to disable this feature and only return results for the keyword 'management' enter your search terms in quotes like this: "management"

Phrase searching

Phrase searching can be conducted by entering more than one keyword inside double quotes. A search for "Fathers Direct" would match the organisation Fathers Direct. A search for "Direct Fathers" would not match the organisation Fathers Direct. All special characters (+/-) will be ignored within a phrase search. If you need to search for specific terms enter them separately inside double quotes like this: "-10". Keywords within a phrase search will not be stemmed.

Negative keywords

It is possible to exclude terms from your search by adding a minus symbol like this: '-Primary'. A search for these terms 'School -Infant -Primary' would only return secondary schools, ignoring primary and infants.

[ Back ]