DO NOT use very broad terms such as “disabled,” “disability” or “program” – they appear on virtually every page of our site!
DO USE specific terms, such as transportation, housing, sexuality, arts, or parents; specific disabilities, such as autism or deafness; state names, such as Idaho or New Mexico; or organization names, such as ABLEDATA or NARIC.
DO NOT use very common words such as “the,” “and” or “with” – they also appear on virtually every page of our site.
By default the search engine tries to locate pages which have exact matches for all of the words entered in your search query. If you list more than one term (e.g., education legal) it will try to find pages that include both of those terms. If that fails, the search engine then tries to locate pages which contain any words in your search query. If that happens a short message is displayed at the top of the search results indicating that this has been done. In addition, there are several ways to modify the default search behavior.
Use the wildcard (*) to include multiple words with the same base. For example, parent* would find pages that have the words parent, parents, or parenting.
Advanced Searching
As indicated above, by default the search engine tries to locate pages which have exact matches for all of the words entered in your search query. If that fails, it then tries to locate pages which contain any words in your search query. In addition, there are several ways to modify the default search behavior.
+ and – qualifiers
If you prepend a word with + that word is required to be on the page.
If you prepend a word with – that word is required to not be on the page. Example: +always -never
* wildcard
If a query word ends with a * all words on a page which start the same way as that query word will match. Example: gift*
? wildcard
If a query word contains a ? any character will match that position. Example: b?g
All of these techniques can be combined: +alway* -ne??r*
Thanks to the fabulous folks at FreeFind for this search tool.