Contents:
The Basic Search
To enter a query, type in a few descriptive words and press the Enter key or click the Search button for a list of relevant results.
The search uses text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. For instance, it looks at text on each page but also the pages linking into it to determine the value of a particular page for your search. The search prefers pages in which your query terms are near each other and returns these higher up the list.
Spelling
A single spelling suggestion is returned with the results for queries where the spell checker has detected a possible spelling mistake. The spell checker feature is context sensitive.
Note: Currently, the spell checker supports only US English. We apologise for any inconvenience that this may cause.
Synonyms
Synonyms are other words that have the same or similar meanings. They are displayed as "You could also try..." on the results page.
Automatic "and" Queries
By default, the search only returns pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include "and" between terms. To broaden or restrict the search, include fewer or more terms.
"OR" Searches
The search supports the logical "OR" operator. To retrieve pages that include either word A or word B, use an uppercase "OR" between terms. For example, to search for an agenda from either Scrutiny or Resources committees, enter: agenda scrutiny OR resources
See Your Search Terms in the Results
The search result lists one or more excerpts from the web page to display how your search terms are used in context on that page. In the excerpt, your search terms are displayed in bold text so that you can quickly determine if that result is from a page you want to visit.
Capitalisation
Searches are not case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you enter them, are understood as lower case. For example, searches for "eden council" and "Eden Council" return the same results.
Wildcards and Stemming
To provide the most accurate results, the search does not use "stemming" or support "wildcard" searches. Searches are made using exactly the words that you enter into the search box.
For example, searching for "tax" or "tax*" will not return"taxi".
Refining Your Search
The search returns web pages that contain all of the words in your query, so refining or narrowing your search is as simple as adding more words to the search terms you have already entered. The refined query returns a specific subset of the pages that were returned by your original broad query.
Excluding Words
You can exclude a word from your search by putting a minus sign ("-") immediately in front of the term you want to exclude. Make sure you include a space before the minus sign.
For example, the search: "council -tax" will return pages about council that do not contain the word "tax."
Phrase Searches
You can search for phrases by adding quotation marks. Words enclosed in double quotes ("like this") appear together in all returned documents. Phrase searches using quotation marks are useful when searching for famous sayings or specific names.
Certain characters serve as phrase connectors. Phrase connectors work like quotes because they join your search words in the same way double quotes join your search words. For example, the search: father-in-law is treated as a phrase search even though the search words are not enclosed in double quotes. The search recognises hyphens(-), slashes(/), full stops(.), equal signs(=), and apostrophes(') as phrase connectors.
Advanced Operators
The search supports several advanced operators, which are query words with special functions. A list of the advanced operators with explanation are provided below. The majority of these can be performed from the Advanced Search page without having to manually type them into the search box.
info:
The query [info:] returns all information available for that particular URL. For instance, [info:www.eden.gov.uk] shows information about this site's homepage. Note there can be no space between the info: and the web page URL.
link:
The query [link:] enables you to restrict your search to all pages that link to the query page. For instance [link:www.eden.gov.uk] returns all pages linking to this site's home page. (No other query terms can be specified when using this special query term.)
allintitle:
If you start a query with [allintitle:], the results are restricted to documents with all of the query words in the document's HTML title. For example, [allintitle: council tax] only returns documents that have both "council" and "tax" in the HTML title.
intitle:
If you include [intitle:] in your query, the search is restricted to results with documents containing that word in the HTML title. For example, [intitle:council tax] returns documents that mention the word "council" in their HTML title, and mention the word "search" anywhere in the document either in the title or anywhere else in the document. Note: There can be no space between the "intitle:" and the following word.
Putting [intitle:] in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting [allintitle:] at the front of your query. For example, [intitle:council intitle:tax] is the same as [allintitle: council tax].
allinurl:
If you start a query with [allinurl:], the search is restricted to results with all of the query words in the URL (page address). For example, [allinurl: council tax] returns only documents that have both "council" and "tax" in the URL.
Note: [allinurl:] works on words, not URL components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, [allinurl: council/tax] restricts the results to page with the words "council" and "tax" in the URL, but doesn't require that they be separated by a slash within that URL, that they be adjacent, or that they be in that particular word order. There is currently no way to enforce these constraints.
inurl:
If you include [inurl:] in your query, the results are restricted to documents containing that word in the URL. For example, [inurl:council tax] returns documents that mention the word "council" in their URL and mention the word "tax" anywhere in the document either in the URL or anywhere else in the document. Note: There can be no space between the "inurl:" and the following word.
Note: [inurl:] works on words, not URL components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. For example, in the query [inurl:council/tax], the inurl: operator affects only the word "council," which is the single word following the inurl: operator, and does not affect the word "tax." The query [inurl:council inurl:tax] can be used to require both "council" and "tax" to be in the URL.
Putting [inurl:] in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting [allinurl:] at the front of your query. For example, [inurl:council inurl:tax] is the same as [allinurl: council tax].
