Search Function Overview

Free-Text Query Help

Use free-text queries if you want to perform searches with everyday (natural) language. To do so, check the box before "Use Free-Text Query" on the Search for Information or Electronic Catalog page and then use everyday language for the query. After you begin the search, the search engine will extract nouns and noun phrases and construct a search query for you. With free-text queries you can enter any text you want, from a proper question to a string of words and phrases, without worrying about the query language.

For example, type in the following query:

need information about children's health research

The search engine will create a query automatically and begin the search. Note that when you're using free-text queries, the more precise search features are disabled, and key words such as and, or, and near are interpreted as normal words.

Rules for Formulating Queries

Consecutive words are treated as a phrase; they must appear in the same order within a matching document.
Queries are case-insensitive, so you can type a query in uppercase or lowercase.
Common words (such as a, an, and, and as) are ignored during a search. These common words are treated as placeholders in phrase and proximity queries. For example, if you searched for “data and surveys”, the results could give you “data and surveys” and “data for surveys”, because for is a "noise" word and ignored.
Punctuation marks such as the period (.), colon (:), semicolon (;), and comma (,) are ignored during a search.
To use specially treated characters (such as &, |, ^, #, @, $, or ,) in a query, enclose your query in quotation marks (“ ”).
To search for a word or phrase containing quotation marks, double the quotation marks around the word or words you want. For example, ““World-Wide Web”” searches for “World-Wide Web.”

Advanced Search Help

Although a search can be performed with just a word or a phrase, you can expand or narrow the focus of your query to obtain better results. These tips will get you started with basic query language and acquaint you with the different types of searches possible. For better results, you may want to:

Put quotation marks around key words to search for exact phrases:

"quality of care"
Add or between key words to find all instances of either one word or another, for example:
ulcers or sores

This query finds all pages that mention ulcers or sores or both.
Put quotation marks around key words to search for them literally. For instance, if you search for:

"health near services"

the search engine will literally find the exact phrase health near services. But if you search for the same query without the quotation marks:

health near services

the search engine will find all Web pages having the words health and services.
Search with the key word near, rather than and, for words close to each other. For example, both of these queries, health and system and health near system, look for the words health and system on the same page. But with near, the search results are ranked by proximity; the closer together the words are, the higher that page ranks.
Look for words with the same prefix. For example, in your query form type key* to find key, keying, keyhole, keyboard, and so on.
Search for all forms of a word. For example, in the form type sink** to find sink, sinking, sank, and sunk.
Refine your queries with and not to exclude certain text from your search. For example, if you want to find all instances of surfing but not the Net, type the following query:
surfing and not the Net

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