Help with Searching

• Basic searches
• Narrowing down searches
• Advanced options
• Still can't find the right document?

Basic searches

The basic search facility has two choices: 

• Search for a phrase: The search facility will attempt find documents that contain any of the word(s) specified.

• Search for keywords: The search facility will find documents that contain all of the word(s) specified. This type of search is usually more accurate than searching for a phrase.

Narrowing down searches 

• Searches are not case sensitive.

• Keyword searches are generally more sensitive than searches for a phrase.

• Enclosing the search words within quotes in a keyword search will match the exact phrase. For example, searching for "adam smith" will find documents containing the name Adam Smith, but not the names Adam Jones, Paul Smith etc.
  

• Selecting the Show Advanced Options link will allow more detailed searches to be made.

Advanced options

Click on the Show Advanced Options to show advanced search options. These allow searches to be restricted in a number of ways: 

• Which web server to search: By default, the search facility allows simultaneous searching of 17 different web servers. This option will allow searches to be restricted to a single web server.

• Which website to search: This option will allow searches to be confined to specific websites at the University of Essex. Most Academic Departments, Centres, Institutes and Research Groups and Services and Administrative Services have their own website. Note that it is not possible to simultaneously restrict searching to a specific website and web server.

Still can't find the right document?

The following might be useful:

• The search facility updates its index at specified regular intervals, so recently created documents may not appear in the index.

• To search for an Essex user, try using this user search facility.

• If you want to search the rest of the Internet, and not just the University of Essex websites, then try using this facility.

• Information about the computing facilities at Essex may be obtained from the Computing Service website.

• If you want to find out more about the University, visit this web page.

• The search facility does not allow searching of University student and staff personal home pages.

• Searches performed on machines that are not directly connected to the University of Essex network cannot search for documents in folders with restricted in the document path. Your machine is not directly connected to the University of Essex network.

• Documents referred to in a server's robots.txt file are not indexed, neither are those that contain the appropriate Robots Meta tag. To stop your own pages appearing in the search results, take a look at this page.