Searching the National State of the Environment Report

Basic searching

You can type any words or phrases you want in the search box. The search engine will look through all of the documents in the web site to find documents that either match the exact words you typed, or which deal with the same general concepts as the query that you entered. This means that sometimes your search results will include articles that don't contain the exact words that you entered, but contain words and concepts which are related. Your query can be as detailed as you like. The more words you use to describe what you're looking for, the better the search engine will be able to find documents for you.

For example, a search for climate change will return a wide range of documents. A search for climate change greenhouse gas emissions enables the search engine to narrow down your information, and you could add more words (for example, the name of the country or region you are interested in) to narrow your search further.

The search results are ranked so that the documents that the computer thinks are most relevant to your query are placed first.

Advanced Query Tips

Use - to Exclude Words

Put a minus sign "-" in front of a word in your query to indicate that you want to see documents which do not contain the word. Do not put any space between the minus sign "-" and the word. This can be very handy for eliminating items which are irrelevant to your search.

Use + to Require Words

Put a plus sign "+" in front of a word, and the search engine will restrict its search to documents which contain this word exactly. Do not put a space between the "+" and the word. For example: water pollution +oil restricts the search to documents containing the word "oil". However, it would miss documents which may be about oil, but use the word "hydrocarbon" instead.

Use AND, OR, NOT, AND NOT, ( )

You can also use the words AND, OR, and NOT to describe your query, and use parentheses ( ) for grouping. Using AND and NOT is equivalent to using "+" and "-" signs. For example, air AND quality AND Northern AND (Cape OR Province) would look for documents about air quality in the Northern Cape or Northern Province. Grouping words to get the results that you intend can be tricky in complicated searches, but if you're used to this style of mathematical or logical notation, it can be a powerful way to search.