search tips

healthfinder® is a free guide to selected consumer reliable health information—online publications, clearinghouses, databases, Web sites, and support and self-help groups, as well as the government agencies and not-for-profit organizations that produce information for the public. Our library of hand-picked links is intended to help you find reliable health information more easily than you can by searching the entire Internet.

Two kinds of searches

There are two kinds of searches on healthfinder®: topic searches and text searches.

Topic searches use healthfinder®'s list of topics, presented in A-Z lists, to search the database of Web sites. Each section of the site uses topic searches. Search results are listed alphabetically.
Text searches use text that you enter in the search box at the top of every page or in the directory of organizations to search our database. The search software ranks the items in the search results according to how closely they match what you type in the search box.
Both kinds of searches work in English and Spanish. (Organization information is available only in English at this time; we continue to work with our partners to increase the amount of information available in other languages.)

On the search result screens

The search result screens for both kinds of searches are similar. You will see—

A title line that shows where you are in the site and the topic or text used for the search.

home > health library > all topics > C > Cancer

The number of search results and links for moving through the list.

displaying: 11–20 of 104 documents | < previous | next > | show all

A link that opens up an advanced search screen.

see categories and related topics for the topic search, or

go to advanced search for the text search.

The list of search results, showing the title of each information resource, the beginning of a description, a link to more information about the resource, and the sponsoring organization (for Web resources) or a link to more information (for organizations). If the information is also available in another language, there will be a link to it.

NCI Cancer Fact Sheets
Also available in: Spanish
A wide range of accurate, credible cancer information from peer-reviewed PDQ® summaries on state-of-the-art care, cancer fact sheets and other publications. Information is based on the results of curr details....
National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health

At the bottom of each screen of search results, more navigation links and a date that indicates the last time the healthfinder® database was updated.

showing 1–10 of 104 documents | next > | show all
jump to page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

database updated: Friday, September 28, 2002

Advanced searches: see categories and related topics/go to advanced search

The basic healthfinder® search results are designed to give you quick access to the most important information on the topic you choose. However, you may wish to—

Zero in on a specific kind of information.
See related topics.
Focus on information in just one language.
Toggle between Web resources and organizations in your search.

To see all the options on the advanced search screens, select the links below.

see categories and related topics for the topic search, or

go to advanced search for the text search.

Text search

healthfinder® offers a text search at the top of every page. You can enter words or phrases in the text box next to the healthfinder® logo and select the apple to run the search.

The search results are returned in order of relevance to your search terms. Relevancy is calculated based on several factors, such as whether the search term occurs in the name of the resource or organization and how many times in occurs in the description, and how closely search terms occur to each other.

You don't have to choose the usual search options of Exact Match, All Words, or Any Words—the software uses all options and returns the best matches first. It also searches for common variations of the words you enter like plural forms and -ing endings.

If you want to restrict the text search in special ways, you can combine the use of double quotes around words or phrases with AND or OR to force only exact matches or restrict results to information containing all of two or more words or phrases to be returned. (When you use quotes, word-stemming or searching for common variations of words is turned off.)