Office of Policy: Advanced Search

For all searches: Enclose exact phrases in double quotes. For example, "change of address" will result in documents about changing your address in Social Security records, while change of address will result in a list of every document that has the words change or address in it.
Concept mode searches are performed on meaning instead of exact matches to your query words. Query terms are expanded to other related terms. For example a search on the word "money" may also locate the similar concepts of "cash" and "dollar".
Boolean mode searches look up documents with (or without) a specific term or terms. Boolean queries can use the standard operators AND, OR, NOT, BUT, and WITHIN. Boolean queries are best at retrieving proper nouns, and words or phrases you know are in the database.
Pattern mode searches for patterns that match your query. This is useful in situations where you have words with various or difficult spellings.