Help Page for Search
General Tips:
Broadening a Search:
To retrieve the maximum number of documents related to your search topic, type multiple search terms
into the search box, omit accents, and choose to search for "any word" in
the second box.
Examples:
- ehealth e-health telehealth telemedicine finds documents related to
the concept of the use of information and communications technologies in health
- nurses doctors pharmacists professionals practitioners finds documents
related to the concept of health professionals
Note re Capitals and Accented Characters:
- There is no need to capitalize words: the search engine will retrieve all documents
containing these words regardless of their capitalization
- if you do not include accents, you will retrieve the term with or without
accents (e.g. cote will find cote, coté, côte, côté, Côte, Côté,
etc.)
- if you do include accented letters, you will limit your search to words
with the exact same accents (e.g. Côte finds only Côte)
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Narrowing a Search:
To limit your search to a specific topic, type your search terms into the search box and choose
to search for "all words" in the second box.
Example:
- nursing strategy finds documents which include both the term nursing and
the term strategy
To limit your search even more, type a specific phrase into the search box and choose to search
for "this phrase" in the second box.
Example:
- nursing strategy finds documents which include the exact phrase nursing
strategy
Note re Phrase Searching:
- If you use an exact phrase, you may not retrieve any documents which may be on 'nursing
strategy' but which do not use the exact phrase nursing strategy
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Using wildcards/truncation:
To search for a group of terms which all have the same root or which all contain a specified pattern
of letters, use an asterisk (*).
Example:
- inter* finds intern, internet, international, interest,
etc.
- inter**t finds internet, international, interest but
not intern
- technol* finds technology, technologies, technologist,
technologists, technological, etc.
Note re Using Asterisks:
- To avoid searches that would be too general, the search engine does not accept an asterisk
in the first 3 letters of a term, e.g.
- tec* is searchable but te* is
not
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Search Page Options
The following provides specific instruction regarding each search box on the Health
Canada Online Search interface
Enter Search Terms
- Enter search terms or words related to documents you wish to locate.
- You don't need to enter any punctuation or the words "and" or "or" - just the terms you are looking
for (e.g. health care professionals)
- If you just enter a term or terms into the first text box "Enter search terms" and click on the "Search" button
at the bottom of the page, you are doing a very basic search. You are searching the full text of
all documents on the Health Canada and Public Health Agency of Canada Web sites.
- Some of the options below will help you do more specific searches.
Return documents containing
This option gives you some say as to how the search engine will look for the terms you have entered
in the "Enter Search Terms" box, e.g.
- If you select "all words" (the default), you will retrieve only those documents which have ALL
of the words somewhere in the document.
- If you select "this phrase", you will retrieve only those documents which have the words or terms
you have selected in the exact order you have entered them (e.g. health care professionals).
In this case, it will not retreive, for example, documents which have the phrase health
care in one sentence or paragraph and health professionals or professionals somewhere
else in the document. But if you are looking for exactly this phrase, this is the best way to do
it.
- If you select "any word", you will retrieve documents which have any of the terms you have entered
if you entered more than one.
Note:
- If you only enter one term in the search box, it is irrelevant which of the above options
you choose.
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Return documents written in
- You can choose to retrieve documents written in English only, French only or both English and
French documents. The default for the English search is 'English' documents. Any documents written
in languages other than English or French will be retrieved by either search.
Return documents in this collection
- You can choose to retrieve documents from the Health Canada Web sites OR from the Public Health
Agency of Canada OR from all of these Web sites. The default is 'All Sites'.
Special Functions
| anchor:text |
Finds pages that contain the specified word or phrase in the text of a hyperlink; e.g.
anchor:strategy would find pages with the word "strategy" in the linked text. |
| image:filename |
Finds pages with images having a specific filename; e.g.
image:pdf would find pages with the PDF icon denoting an Adobe Acrobat file. |
| url:text |
Finds pages with a specific word or phrase in the URL; e.g.
url:pmra-arla would find pages where "pmra-arla" (Pest Management Review Agency)
appears in the url. |
| link:url text |
Finds pages that include (a) specific Web link(s); e.g.
link:www.hc-sc.gc.ca/hpfb-dgpsa/onpp-bppn/food_guide _rainbow_e.html would
find any page which links to Canada's Food Guide. |
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