Here's a quick overview of our Search Help. Just click on the links to jump to these sections.

• What is an "Index" ?
• What is a Word?
• What is a Phrase?
• Simple Tips for More Exact Searches
• Features for Typical Searches

The Basics

The search service helps you find documents on our Web site. Here's how it works: You tell the search service what you're looking for by typing in keywords, phrases, or questions in the search box. The search service responds by giving you a list of all the Web pages in our index relating to those topics. The most relevant content will appear at the top of your results.

How To Use:

1. Type your keywords in the search box.
2. Press the Search button to start your search.

Here's an example:

1. Type canada passport information in the search box.
2. Press the Search button or press the Enter key.
3. The Results page will show you numerous pages on the Web about passport information.

Tip: Don't worry if you find a large number of results. In fact, use more than a couple of words when searching. Even though the number of results will be large, the most relevant content will always appear at the top of the result pages.

What is an "Index"?

Webster's dictionary describes an "index" as "a sequential arrangement of material." Our index is a large, growing, organized collection of web pages from our web site. The 'index' becomes larger as new web pages are added. We also have technology that crawls our web site looking for links to new web pages. When you use our search service, you search the entire collection using keywords or phrases.

What is a word?

When searching, think of a word as a combination of letters and numbers. The search service needs to know how to separate words and numbers to find exactly what you want on the Internet. You can separate words using white space and tabs.

What is a phrase?

You can link words and numbers together into phrases if you want specific words or numbers to appear together in your result pages. If you want to find an exact phrase, use "double quotation marks" around the phrase when you enter words in the search box.

Example 1: To find youth employment strategy, type "youth employment strategy" in the search box.

You can also create phrases using punctuation or special characters such as dashes, underscore lines, commas, slashes, or dots.

Example 2: Try searching for 1 800 667-3355 instead of 1-800-667-3355. The dashes link the numbers together as a phrase.

Simple Tips for More Exact Searches

Viewing your search results in your language:
Using the Language pull-down menu in the search box, you can find all the documents on the Web Sites about a given topic, originally written in a specific language. This type of search excludes web pages written in other languages so that you can make your search even more exact.

Example: If you select the French pull-down option when searching for passport, you will see result pages including the word passport written on French Web pages.

When in doubt, use lowercase text in your searches.
When you use lowercase text, the search service finds both upper and lowercase results. When you use upper case text, the search service finds only upper case.

Example: When you search for ottawa, you'll find Ottawa, ottawa, and OTTAWA in your result pages. However, when you search for Ottawa, you'll only see Ottawa in the result pages.

Including or excluding words:
To make sure that a specific word is always included in your search topic, place the plus (+) symbol before the key word in the search box. To make sure that a specific word is always excluded from your search topic, place a minus (-) sign before the keyword in the search box.

Example: To find rail and ship transportation excluding air in Canada, try rails +ship +canadian -air.

Expand your search using wildcards (*):
By typing an * at the end of a keyword, you can search for the word with multiple endings.

Example: Try tax*, to find taxes, taxable and taxation.

The Search engine searches more than just text. Here are all of the other ways you can search on the net:

Keyword	Function
anchor:text	Finds pages that contain the specified word or phrase in the text of a hyperlink.
applet:class	Finds pages that contain a specified Java applet. Use applet:morph to find pages using applets called morph.
image:filename	Finds pages with images having a specific filename. Use image:canada to find pages with images called canada.
text:text	Finds pages that contain the specified text in any part of the page other than an image tag, link, or URL. The search text:cow9 would find all pages with the term cow9 in them.
title:text	Finds pages that contain the specified word or phrase in the page title (which appears in the title bar of most browsers). The search title:Initiative would find pages with Initiative in the title.