Tips for searching urban75

To use this search engine you simply type keywords or phrases in to the search box and then click on the button labled search. After a short while a list of links to pages matching your search will be displayed with the best matches appearing towards the top.

If you don't get satisfactory results you may need to modify your search
using the advanced features but it is not difficult!

Advanced searches made easy

To make an effective seach it is important to know the difference between words and phrases. You might have typed community composting and found your results included pages that contained both the words community and composting but not community composting itself. In this case community composting is not simply two words but a phrase. Phrases should be entered in "double quotation marks". ie. "community composting"

Another important feature is the option of choosing to search for ALL or ANY of the keywords or phrases you typed. If you choose ALL then only the pages that contain every word or phrase you provided will be displayed. If you choose ANY, then pages will be displayed even if only one match was found. While the ALL option (which is the default option) usualy provides the best search, it is often useful to use the ANY option. For example you might look for the phrases "forest garden" and "woodland garden" using the ALL option because the terms are generally interchangeable.

Further tips for effective searches

1. All searches are case insensitive and accent insensitive. Searching for cafe will match the lowercase cafe, uppercase CAFE, and the accented café.
2. To make sure that a specific word is always included in your search topic, place the plus (+) symbol before the key word in the search box. To make sure that a specific word is always excluded from your search topic, place a minus (-) sign before the keyword in the search box.
   Example: "community composting" -toilet should exclude pages that refer to a community compost toilet rather than community composting itself. However you would miss documents that talk about both community composting and compost toilets so this feature should be used with care.
3. You can expand your search using wildcards (*). By typing an * at the end of a keyword, you can search for the word with multiple endings. Example: Try garden*, to find garden, gardens, gardener, gardeners and gardening.