Search Tips

Using the search feature

The Brevard County site offers two ways to search: the basic search and the advanced search. The basic search is conveniently located at the top of every page. Next to it is a link called "Advanced Search" that will take you to the Advanced Search page. This page provides several tips to help you use either search.

• Basic Search
  • Using Boolean operators
  • Other useful tags
• Advanced Search
  • Selecting a site/agency
  • Refining a search
  • Lenient search
  • Other features

Basic Search

The simple search provides a convenient means to search the Brevard County website regardless of what page is currently being viewed. While simply typing a word or two will return results, there are a few operators that may be used to improve these results.

Example: Using * before or after a search element allows for a search of any element starting (ex: Co*) or finishing (ex: *ty) with the element. (Note that both these searches would return matches with "county" since it starts with "co" and ends with "ty.")

BOOLEAN OPERATORS

MORE OPERATORS

Advanced Search

The link to the "Advanced Search" page is located on every page, adjacent to the basic search. Clicking on it will take you to the advanced search page - a page designed to help refine searches without having to memorize operators.

Example: Rather than typing Brevard AND County, you can simply enter Brevard County in the text field labeled "with all of these words."

SELECTING A SITE/AGENCY

Any search performed from the basic search will search the entire Brevard County website. This may result in more matches than you can sort through. The "Select a site/agency" option allows you to limit your search to a particular area. Note that when you first get to the Advanced Search page, the "entire web site" is selected. As it states, this option signals that the entire Brevard County domain should be searched. Just click on the down area and select a new site to limit your search to that particular site.

Example: If you want to find a page concerning "crime" and you know that it will be in the "911 Brevard" site, then you can select "911 Brevard" from the pulldown menu. The results page will only list matches found within this agency.

REFINING A SEARCH

1. "With all of these words"
   • returns a page as a match only if it contains each of the words entered in the field
   • Example: entering "Melbourne Florida," only returns a page as a match if it contains both Melbourne and Florida.
2. "Without these words"
   • allows you to exclude pages if they contain certain words
   • Example: to find pages on surfing in the ocean rather than surfing the Internet, enter "Internet" in this field. This ensures that any page containing the word "Internet" does not appear on your results page.
3. "With any of these words"
   • returns pages that include at least one of the words entered in the field
   • Example: entering "Frances Jeanne," returns results that contain "Jeanne," "Frances," or both.
4. "With the exact phrase"
   • returns any pages that contain the phrase exactly as it appears in the field.
   • Example: typing "Brevard property" returns any page that contains the phrase "Brevard property." A page that contains the phrase "Brevard property appraiser" would be excluded because the word "property" interrupts the searched for phrase.

LENIENT SEARCH

If your results page does not contain what you expected to find, then the lenient search option may help you. There are three possible modes for this feature:

1. "Is spelled similarly to"
   • provides a solution to tricky spelled words or simple typos
   • searches for the word entered in this field as well as any other word with a similar spelling.
   • Example: "apraiser" will return any pages that contain this typo as well as any that contain the correct spelling, "appraiser," or the plural, "appraisers"
2. "Means the same thing as"
   • searches for the word typed in the field as well as its synonyms
   • Example: "job" would return all pages containing "job" as well as those containing "position," "occupation," "capacity," etc.
3. "Contains the word or letters"
   • provides the ultimate leniency
   • helpful if you are unsure of the spelling of a word and are only certain of a few letters
   • enter as many letters that you do know the word contains, and the search will attempt to find words that contain those letters.
   • Example: if you cannot remember how to spell "processor," then you can enter "proce", which will return pages containing words such as "process," "processing," "proceed," and "processor."

OTHER FEATURES

• Results: Allows you to choose how many results should be shown on each page. It is set to 10 by default.
• Include Summary: The default results page will include a brief summary next to each of the matches found. To turn this feature off, uncheck the box next to "Include Summary."
• Case Sensitive: By default, this is set to "no." Use caution when turning on as case can be tricky and dependent on sentence placement. Turning it on may return far less matches than when it is off.