Help on Search
Welcome to our Search Help page. You will find hints and tips here
for getting the most from the site search tool.
Too many hits? Narrow your search results
When you run a search and get too many hits, the Results page has
some useful for features for homing in on the results you want.
On the right side are boxes with links you can
use to constrain your search:
- Related reports - many people use the NAO
website to obtain copies of our reports. This box holds links to
the top reports related to your search
- Audit Sector - narrows
results to a sector of government
- Date of publication
- constrains results to a specific year only
- Type of report - narrows
search to press releases, published reports, work in progress
notices
- Areas of Expertise
- constrains search to sepecialist articles and studies that
exemplify our current thinking on specific topics
Note: To return to the full search results
list, click the 'Show All' link below the Search Box
Advanced Search
The Advanced Search page allows you to put
together complex searches.
- With all of the words - all
the words must be present in the documents that are found.
e.g. doctors AND nurses
finds documents with both the words ‘doctors’ and ‘nurses’ but not
just 'nurses'.
- With the exact phrase - the
words must be present in the documents found in the order you have
typed.
e.g ‘Audit Committee’
finds documents with the phrase ‘Audit Committee’ but not
‘Committee Audit’.
- With at least one of the
words - any or all of the words will be present in the
documents that are found.
e.g. Audit OR Auditing
finds any document with the word Audit, Auditing or both.
- Without the words - narrow
down your search results by excluding a word
e.g. defence NOT coastal
finds documents about defence, but not coastal defence.
Boolean Search
The Advanced Search page provides a simple
interface to use Boolean search operators - AND, OR and NOT. Other
search operators can be used and combined to make complex searches.
Combine them with your search terms in the search box. Remember to
always put search operators in capitals.
- AND - Both words must be
present in the document
e.g. doctors AND nurses
finds all documents with both the words ‘doctors’ and ‘nurses’ but
not just 'nurses'
- OR - Either of the words (or
both) will be present (this is the default when searching).
e.g. Audit OR Auditing
Finds any document with the word Audit or Auditing or both
words
- NOT - Narrow down your
search by excluding a word
e.g. defence NOT coastal
finds documents about defence, but not coastal defence
- XOR - Either one or the
other, but not both words
e.g. cluster sampling XOR systematic sampling
Finds instances of one or the other, but not both
- ( ) – Break down more
complicated searches into logical chunks.
e.g. London AND (Olympics or 2012)
Finds documents about London but only if they also mention either
Olympics or 2012
- NEAR - Finds documents where
the second word is within x words of the first word
e.g. london NEAR1 bid
Finds where ‘london’ is next to, or one word away from, ‘bid’. So
it will find ‘london olympic bid’, but not ‘london 2012 olympic
bid’.
- DNEAR - Like NEAR, but the
order has to be the same as in your search
Health DNEAR1 Safety
This finds ‘Health & Safety’ but not ‘Safety promotes
health’
- WNEAR - Stands for ‘weighted
near’. The closer the terms are to each other in the document, the
higher the relevance that they are given, the closer to the top
they appear in the results.
e.g. nuclear WNEAR decommissioning
The closer the words ‘nuclear’ and ‘decommissioning’, the higher
their ranking
- BEFORE - Returns documents
where the first word is before the second one.
e.g. Tax BEFORE return
Finds ‘tax return’ but not ‘return tax’
- AFTER - Returns documents
where the first word is after the second one.
e.g. tax AFTER return
Finds ‘return tax’ but not ‘tax return’
Tips
Words you cannot search on
In common with a number of other search
engines ours ignores the most common words that occur a lot in
documents (e.g. and, or, if, what, other, some, they, not, do,
any). These words cannot be searched on.
If you want to use logic in your search such
as AND, OR or
NOT, be sure to put them in capitals.
To enable you to search for 'IT Project' we have allowed searching
on this word. Unfortunately there is no way to differentiate
between 'it' and 'IT'. If you are searching for 'IT' try including
the word 'computer' as well.
Word Stemming
Search uses stemming to find words that have
the same root. For example, a search for ‘audit’ will also find
‘audits’, ‘auditing’ and ‘audited’.
This word stemming is based on a computer algorithm rather than
human choice. Sometimes it doesn’t quite work as expected. For
example, a search for ‘probation’ will also find ‘probate’.
Opening PDF files
As a large proportion of the content of this
website is contained in Adobe Acrobat files, we recommend that you
always use the latest version of the Acrobat plug-in. To download
the latest Acrobat plug-in, visit the Accessible
Page for downloading Acrobat
Adobe is aware of the accessibility challenge
that Acrobat files can pose, and have worked accessibility features
into the 5 (or greater) version of the plugin. These include the
ability to reflow documents and deal with Unicode characters. To
read more about these features are and how you might benefit from
them, visit the Adobe Accessibility pages.
Subscribe to our alerts service
Click the RSS button on the search
results to subscribe. If you have a newsfeed agregator
or use a browser that supports RSS newsfeeds, you will get
automatic alerts when something new is added to the website
that matches your search.
If you can’t find what you are looking for
Is this the right website?
The work of the NAO is sometimes confused
with that of the following bodies:
If you still cannot find the information you
are looking for, contact:
The NAO Information Centre Helpdesk
Telephone +44 (0)20 7798 7264
Fax +44 (0)20 7798 7903
Email: enquiries@nao.gsi.gov.uk