Help with search
We've tried to make our search as simple and easy-to-use as possible. For most searches, a simple search is all you will need. Simply type the word or words you're looking for and click the search button or press the Enter key.
Our search engine will search its index and return up to 200 results, with the most relevant first. Relevance is calculated according to how many times the words appear in the document or web page, and whether or not they appear in page titles, or as metadata keywords.
We have used the convention of using square brackets to represent the search box, with the exact terms inside the brackets. So:
- [Smart successful Scotland] means typing the words Smart Successful Scotland into the search box; and
- ["Smart Successful Scotland"] means typing "Smart Successful Scotland" including the quotation marks into the search box.
Search terms
It's important to choose the right words to search for to find the information you want. Remember that the search engine is looking for words that appear in web pages or documents, so try to use words that you are confident will be included.
If you try a search and get lots of results, you can narrow it down by adding more words to search for. The words you originally searched for are retained in the search box at the top of the results page.
For example, if you're looking for information about Modern Apprenticeships Awards, searching for [Modern Apprenticeships Awards] will get better results than [Modern Apprenticeships].
Capital letters
Our search engine ignores capital letters. So searching for [smart successful scotland], [Smart Successful Scotland] or [sMART sUCCESSFUL sCOTLAND] will all return the same results.
And and/or or
If you search for more than one word or term, our search will automatically look for entries that include both (or all) of them. So there's no need to include AND.
However, you can use OR to instruct the search to look for either (or any) of your search terms. So searching for [smart successful scotland] will return results that include the words smart and successful and Scotland. But searching for [smart OR successful OR scotland] will return results that include one, two or three of the words. (Because the results are ranked by relevance, those that include all three terms will be ranked highest.)
Common words
Our search ignores common words like a, in, it, to. So if you search for [in a smart successful scotland] it will ignore in and a. It will tell you which words were not included in the search, in a grey panel above the first result.
If you want to include common words in your search, you can search for phrases rather than individual words.
Searching for phrases
If you want to search for an exact phrase, put it in quotation marks. So if you search for ["in a smart successful scotland"] it will return only web pages and documents that include an exact match for that phrase, with all the words in that order.
Wildcards
Wildcards are special characters that allow you to widen your search. We use two wildcards: asterisks (*) and question marks (?).
Asterisk wildcard
The asterisk wildcard works in the same way as in Microsoft's Windows operating system. Basically, it's shorthand for 'could be anything'. You can use it to find all terms that share the same common root.
For example, a search for [grow*] will return results for grow as well as growth, growing, grown, and so on.
If you put an asterisk in the middle of a word, it will find all words which share the same start and finish - but may contain any number of characters in between.
So a search for [in*ent] will return invent, independent, investment, involvement and so on.
Don't leave a space between the asterisk and the rest of the word. The asterisk wildcard does not work at the start of words: you can't use [*lammable] to search for flammable and inflammable.
Question mark wildcard
You can use a question mark to indicate that any letter (or number) could go here. This is useful if there are various spellings of a word. For example, searching for [advis?r] will find results for both adviser and advisor.