SEARCH GUIDE

FOR PARL.GC.CA

This Guide provides a quick overview of various techniques you can use to search the Parliament of Canada web site. Here are some tips that will help you with your search:

More keywords deliver fewer results Beware of words that have more than one meaning, especially if you search for one keyword at a time Avoid using questions. Avoid using words that might be associated with the topic but are not likely to appear on the pages. For example, slang words will not likely appear in a formal report. Use more precise, less ambiguous terms in your search. Start with a broad search and then refine it by adding advanced operators that will restrict your search to specific sites.

Consult the following sections for more ideas on how to improve your search results:

Basic search rules - page 2

Learn how your search queries are interpreted by the search engine and how to avoid common search mistakes.

Use standard search operators to refine your search - page 3

This section describes standard search operators that you can use to increase the accuracy of your search and shorten the list of search results.

Use advanced search techniques to target your search - page 4

This section describes how to use advanced search operators to create more precise search queries that will deliver more focused search results.

Examples: combine various techniques - page 7

View working examples of the search queries that combine standard and advanced search operators.

SEARCH GUIDE FOR WWW.PARL.GC.CA

Basic search rules

What you type into the Search box affects your search results. These are basic rules that govern the search.
Rule Implicit AND Explanation The Search tool finds pages that match all search terms. It adds an implicit AND between each search term. Examples If you type national military cemetery in the Search box, you will be searching for the terms national AND military AND cemetery. If you type the term MP in the Search box, you may not find the occurrences of the term member of parliament. If you type the term minister in the Search box, you will also find occurrences of the terms ministers and ministry. If you search for members of parliament, one of the top pages in the results is Parliament of Canada Home Page, although the phrase members of parliament does not appear on this page.

Exact matching

The Search tool matches your search terms exactly, although different terms for the misspelled words may be suggested. The Search tool finds pages that contain terms similar to your search terms.

Word variance

Relevancy

A particular word from your search query might not appear in the results if the Search tool determines that the content of the page is otherwise relevant.

Stop words excluded

Some commonly used words (called stop words) such as the, Instead of report on health, use report health a, on, where, how, de, la, are ignored. Therefore, you do not need to include them in your query. Exception: Stop words that are part of a name or popular phrase are included in the search. Your search query cannot be longer than 32 words. If you have multiple words in your query, the top search results will show pages that have these terms near each other on the page. If you search for health report, the pages that contain occurrences of both words will be at the top of the search results, followed by the pages where each word occurs separately. If you search for health report, priority will be given to pages that contain the phrase health report followed by pages that contain the phrase report on health.

32-word limit Term proximity

Term order

If you have multiple words in your query, the top search results will show pages that have these terms in the same order as in your query.

Not case sensitive

The Search tool ignores case distinctions in search terms. Searching for Parliament of Canada produces the Exception: The reserved operators such as OR and AND must same results as searching for parliament of canada. be in uppercase.

Punctuation ignored

The Search tool ignores punctuation and special characters in search terms. Exceptions: Punctuation with a particular meaning (for example C++ or C#) is not ignored. The underscore symbol (_) is not ignored when it connects two words.

Searching for m.p. will produce the same results as searching for mp.

Hyphenated term variants

The variations on hyphenated terms are included in the search to accommodate different spelling forms.

Searching for agri-food finds pages that contain the term with a hyphen (agri-food), without a hyphen (agrifood) and with a space (agri food).

SEARCH GUIDE FOR WWW.PARL.GC.CA

Use standard search operators to refine your search

Most searches are either single- or multi-word strings, typed directly in the Search field. Usually, these simple searches find a large number of matching pages. Sifting through these pages may be time consuming. Use simple keyword modifiers such as a minus sign to narrow search results to a more manageable list. These modifiers are called operators and, when used in the search query, will increase the accuracy of your search. Tip: When entering search terms in the Search box, use words that are likely to appear on the pages you want to find. For example, do not use slang words to find a formal report.
Search Operator Quotation marks "keyword" "keyword keyword" Description Enclosing a single keyword in double quotes generates searches for pages that include this exact word, disregarding pages with synonyms. For example, if you search for "pm", the results will not include the pages with "prime minister" in them. Enclosing a phrase in double quotes generates searches for pages that contain this exact combination of words. For example, searching for "military cemetery" will find the pages where the term "military cemetery" occurs but will not find the pages with just the words "military" or "cemetery". Warning: If you forget to type the closing quotation, the quote operator will be extended to the end of your keyword string, possibly reducing your matches to zero. - (minus) -keyword Placing a minus (-) sign in front of a term will exclude this term from the search results. For example, searching for national cemetery military will find pages with the words national and cemetery, but will not show pages with phrases like "national military cemetery". Placing a tilde (~) sign in front of a term generates searches for the term and its synonyms. For example, searching for national ~memorial will also find pages that contain such terms as "national Holocaust monument" and "national veterans funeral honours act". Placing the OR (or |) operator between two terms will find pages that include at least one of the terms. For example, searching for national OR military | cemetery will find pages that contain the word "national", pages that contain the word "military", and pages that contain the word "cemetery". Note: The OR operator must be preceded and followed by spaces. The vertical bar does not need the surrounding spaces. .. (two periods) number..number Tip: You can use the number operators to search for a range of dates. Searching for hansard 2000..2011 will show you links to Hansard publications between the years 2000 and 2011. * (asterisk) *keyword Use an asterisk operator (also called wildcard) as a placeholder for one or more words. For example, searching for * cemetery will find pages that contain such phrases as "Beechwood Cemetery", "national cemetery", "military cemetery" and "Catarqui Cemetery". Using two numbers separated by two periods (with no spaces) indicates that you are looking for results within the specified range of numbers.

~ (tilde) ~keyword

| (vertical bar), OR keyword OR keyword keyword | keyword

Tip: Refine your query by adding more words or changing the words. Study the results to get an idea of the keywords that you should use.
SEARCH GUIDE FOR WWW.PARL.GC.CA 3

Use advanced search techniques to target your search

In addition to basic search operators, you can use a variety of advanced operators. The role of these operators is to provide conditions that restrict the search and narrow down the results. Warning: Use these operators with caution as they may exclude some important pages from your search results. Tip: Most of the basic and advanced operators can be used with each other. However, operators which start with "allin" should not be mixed with other operators. Type these operators directly in the Search field. An operator can be used on its own or may be combined with other search words.

Operator intitle:

Use this operator to: Find pages that contain a specific word in the title of the page.

Explanation

Examples

The query term must appear in the title of the page. If you want to search for bills that deal with The title of the page is the text that appears in the copyright, you may use the following query: pages title bar. copyright intitle:bill This query will find pages such as this: Note: There is no space between the operator and the following word.

intext:

Find pages that contain a specific word in the text of the page.

The query terms must appear in the text of the page. Note: There is no space between the operator and the following word.

If you want to find text published in Hansard that mentions CBC, you may construct the following query: hansard intext:cbc This query will find pages such as this:

SEARCH GUIDE FOR WWW.PARL.GC.CA

Operator inurl:

Use this operator to: Restrict your findings to pages with one of the following publishing criteria:

Explanation

Examples

The query term must appear in the URL of the page. If you want to restrict your search to documents nd about health that were published during the 2 th Note: There is no space between the operator and session of the 39 Parliament, your query will look the following word. like this: health inurl:parl=39 inurl:ses=2

The following parameters and values for the inurl: operator can be used: published by Senate sen indicates Senate publications published by the housepublications indicates House of House of Commons publications Commons parl=# indicates Parliament number published during a ses=# indicates parliamentary session specific number Parliament published during a specific parliamentary session inanchor: Find pages that contain links to a specific section of the web site (as identified by the specified word) The query terms must appear in the link present on the page.

This query: inanchor:journals will find pages that contain links pages with the term Journals in them, for example this page:

Note: There is no space between the operator and the following word.

allintitle:

Find pages that All query terms must appear in the title of the page. contain specific words in the title of Notes: the page. Do not use other operators with the allintitle: operator. The allintitle: operator must be placed at the beginning of the query.

Because Hansard publications have the following title: Official Report * Table of Contents * Number XXX (Official Version) you may search for these pages using the following query: allintitle:official report

allintext:

Find pages that All query terms must appear in the text of the page. contain specific words in the text of Notes: the page. Do not use other operators with the allintext: operator. The allintext: operator must be placed at the beginning of the query.

The following query: allintext:andrew scheer will find the pages that mention the current Speaker of the House of Commons.

SEARCH GUIDE FOR WWW.PARL.GC.CA

Operator allinurl:

Use this operator to: Restrict your findings to pages with the multiple publishing criteria: published by Senate published by the House of Commons published during a specific Parliament published during a specific parliamentary session

Explanation All query terms must appear in the URL of the page. Notes:

Examples Using the following query: allinurl:sen committee

will find pages related to Senate committees that Do not use other operators with the have the word sen and the word committee in allinurl: operator. The allinurl: operator must be placed their URL, such as this page: at the beginning of the query.

allinanchor:

Find pages that show links to specific sections of the web site (as identified by the specified words).

All query terms must appear in the text of the link present on the page. Notes: Do not use any other operators with the allinanchor: operator. The allinanchor: operator must be placed at the beginning of the query.

This query: allinanchor:order paper will find the pages that show link text with the words "order", "paper" or "order paper", like this page:

SEARCH GUIDE FOR WWW.PARL.GC.CA

Examples: combine various techniques

The following examples show how to combine various search operators to construct effective search queries. Example 1 You want to search for committee debates related to the health of Canadians. The first query that you write might look like this: health of canadians intitle:evidence The keyword evidence used in the intitle operator comes from the knowledge that recorded committee proceedings use the word Evidence in their page title:

To narrow down the search results to Senate publications only, you can modify the query by using the inurl operator with the sen parameter: health of canadians intitle:evidence inurl:sen

To narrow down the search results to House of Commons publications only, modify the query as follows: health of canadians intitle:evidence inurl:housepublications Example 2 Search for the Auditor Generals report published by both chambers in the 38th Parliament. The search query will look like this: auditor general report inurl:(housepublications OR sen) inurl:parl=38

Notice the following operators used in this query: The OR operator is used to indicate that you want to search either the House or the Senate publications. The inurl operator restricts the search to 38th Parliament publications.

Example 3 You need to find documents that talk about the Canadian Coast Guard. You know that these documents were published during the latter part of the 40th Parliament. Your search query might look like this: canadian coast guard inurl:parl=40 (inurl:ses=2 OR inurl:ses=3)

Notice the following operators used in this query: The inurl operator is used three times to specify the 40th Parliament and to narrow down the search to the 2nd and 3rd session. The OR operator is used to indicate that documents from either session are acceptable. SEARCH GUIDE FOR WWW.PARL.GC.CA 7