Tips for Searching the Finance Web Site

At its simplest, a query can be just a word or a phrase. But with the tips on this page, you can change the focus of your query to give you more precise results. These tips will get you started with basic query language and acquaint you with the power of the search engine.

- Word searching - Phrase searching - Truncation - "Fuzzy" searching  
- Boolean operators.

Word searching 

Type one or more key words.

Sample search: regulations legislation will give results containing either regulations or legislation or both. If you request results sorted by relevance, the documents containing the most instances of the key words will appear at the top of the search results list.

Phrase searching

Type key words enclosed in quotation marks. This will ensure that the search results contain only perfect matches (the same words in the same order).

Sample search: "tax expenditure report" will give results containing the phrase tax expenditure report.

Truncation

Replace the ending of a key word with an asterisk (*) as a wild card character to retrieve documents containing variant root word endings.

Example: financ* will retrieve documents containing the variations finance, finances, financial, finance's, etc.

"Fuzzy" searching

Add two asterisks (**) as wild card characters to the end of a key word to search for all forms of that word.

Example: sink** will retrieve documents containing sink, sinking, sank, and sunk.

Boolean operators

These are used to combine key words into one search.

& (and): used to include two or more concepts in a search (i.e. & narrows a search).

Example: budget & policy will retrieve documents containing both concepts.

| (or): used to search for synonyms, related words or different forms of a word (i.e. | expands a search).

Example: nafta | "tariff elimination" will retrieve documents containing either or both of the concepts.

& ! (and not): used to exclude documents containing certain concepts (i.e. & ! narrows a search).

Example: apple & ! computer will retrieve only documents about the fruit.

~ (near): used rather than & (and) to search for words close to each other (proximity searching).

Example: both of these queries, pensions & legislation and pensions ~ legislation, look for the words pensions and legislation on the same page.

However, with ~, the returned pages are ranked in order of proximity. The closer together the words are in the document, the higher the document will be ranked and the closer the document will be to the top of the search results list if you select "sort by relevance".