User Instructions for the Search Tool

The Search Tool has a text box at the top. Enter the text you want to look for in here and press the Search button. If you need to, press the same button - which changes to Stop - to halt the search.

The title of any result pages are shown in the box on the left below. The results are prioritised, so that more important results tend to be shown first. The selected page in the list has its abstract shown in the text area to the right, and its URL is shown in the status area at the bottom of the screen.

Select the page that you want to see, and press the Display page button.

You can use wild card characters to obtain a list of all words that match your search criteria. Use * anywhere in a word to match any number of characters. Use ? to match any single character. The found words are shown in the list box. Click on the Search button once you have highlighted the word that you want to look up. Only the first 50 found words are displayed

#### Text Searches

Hi Spy splits up your search text into its individual words (separated by space, comma, colon or semi-colon characters). It removes any non-alphanumeric characters from the beginning and end of each word, and - if present - removes 's from the end of the word.

| Searching for | Finds a page that contains:
Simple Search: In the simplest case, Search displays a list of pages that contain all the words you entered. The words may be at any place in the page. | biodiversity | This page may contain information on biodiversity. The word biodiversity may be anywhere on the page. The word bio-diversity will not be found.
Search for a Phrase: (double quotes) To search for a string of text or a phrase, enclose the text in double quotes. The search engine looks for pages where the words occur in exaactly the same order. | "livestock biodiversity" | This page may contain information about livestock biodiversity. However, the search will not find pages that contian the phrase biodiversity of livestock.
Plurals, etc: Note that the word sheets is different from sheet and will not be found. However, different capital letters will be found. | sheet | Sheet and SHEET
Capital letters: If you enter a word with some capital letters then matching capitals are found first. | Sheet | Pages that contain Sheet are listed first Then pages with sheet and SHEET are listed
Exact capital letters (single quotes): If your search text is enclosed in single quotes then Hi Spy looks for pages where the words have exactly the same case letters | 'Sheet' | finds Sheet ... but not sheet ....
Double and Single Quotes: The search engine will only find pages where the letters are in the same case and the words in the same order. | "'Communal Areas'" | Pages that contain the phrase Communal Areas will be found. The words communal areas will not be found.