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Basic Search Techniques

FCC Search uses a powerful commercial search engine with intuitive, familiar functionality that makes it easy to use to get meaningful results. Just type in a few words or phrases. Try to use discriminating terms that are likely to be found only in the documents you seek. The more words you give, the better results you'll get. Here are some examples:


Search by typing words and phrases

Pentium computer with 8x CD-ROM for sale

FCC Search will find documents containing as many of these words and phrases as possible, ranked so that the documents most relevant to your query are presented first. Don't worry about missing a document because it doesn't have one of the words in your search -- FCC Search returns relevant results even if they don't contain all query terms.


Identify phrases with quotation marks, separate with commas

Pentium computer with "8x CD-ROM", "for sale"

A phrase is entered using double quotation marks, and only matches those words which appear adjacent to each other. Separate multiple phrases or proper names with a comma.


Use UPPER case to indicate exact match

Steve Jobs, NeXT

Search terms in lowercase will match words in any case, otherwise, an exact case match is used. For example, next will find matches for Next, next, and NeXT, whereas a query for NeXT will only match NeXT.



last reviewed/updated on 7/2/03 


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