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Searching the site

One of the easiest ways to find what you are looking for on Aged Care Australia is to search for it. Aged Care Australia provides two methods for you to search:

The two types of search can be accessed from the top right hand section (the 'searching and finding' section in a text browser) of every page.

Remember, the more words you enter the more specific the results of your search will be; you will also have less results to sort through. If you put in a lot of words and get no results try removing one or two words; your search will then return more results.

The following sections provide an introduction to how each of these searches work. There is also an introduction on how to use the results of your search.

Simple Search

The simple search is available on the top-right hand side of every page on Aged Care Australia.

To use the simple search simply enter one or more of the words you are looking for, separated by a space, into the box and select the 'go' button. The simple search will then look through the information on Aged Care Australia and give you a list of the pages on the site that contained all of the words you entered.

You can read more about how to use the results of your search in the section on Using Search Results.

More Search Options

In most cases the simple search will enable you to find what you are looking for. However, if you wish to be more specific about what you are looking for, Aged Care Australia gives you some more options to fine tune your search. These additional options can be accessed from the 'More search options' link available under the simple search on every page. When you click this link you will be taken to another page that enables you to fine-tune your search.

The following table explains what each of the options available on the 'more search options' page does.

Option Description
Search in Enables you to select what type of information you are looking for. The options are:
  1. All information, but not publications This enables you to restrict your search to web pages you can view in your browser.
  2. All information, including publications This enables you to search all information, including files you can download and print such as PDFs
  3. Publications onlyThis enables you to restrict your search to files you can download and print out such as PDFs.
Search for Enables you to enter a list of the words that you want to search for, separated by a space. If you want to look for an exact phrase, you can enclose two or more words in quotes, e.g. "aged care". You must enter at least 4 characters.
Containing Enables you to fine-tune your search by looking only for pages that contain:
  1. All of the words. This enables you to restrict your search to pages that contain all of the words you want to search for anywhere in the page.
  2. Any of the words. This enables you to restrict your search to pages that contain one or more of the words you want to search for.
  3. Exact phrase. This enables you to restrict your search to pages that contain the words you entered in the order you entered them.
and show Enables you to select the information you want shown in the search results. You can choose either:
  1. Title and summary. The site will show you the title of each page that matches your search, along with a short description of what that page is about.
  2. Title only. The site will show you only the title of the pages that match your search.
 


Once you have filled out the form select the 'go' button to see the results. You can read more about how to use the results of your search in the section on Using Search Results.

Using the Search Results

Once you have selected 'go' the site will look for the pages that match your search. The site will then show you a listing of these pages.

The search results page is displayed in a number of sections. The following table explains what each section does.

Section Description
Search results for Displays a list of the words that you searched for.
# to # of # matches Tells you how many matches there were for your search and lets you know which matches are currently being displayed.
Related topics Enables you to search for information on other topics that may be of interest to you. The site will show you topics that are similar to, or related to, the words you searched for.
Make your search ... Enables you to make your search more general or more specific. This will help you increase or decrease the number of search results. The site will show you topics that relate to the words you search for.
Results Displays information about the results of your search. The following information is displayed for each result:
  1. Stars / Try This First Results marked as 'Try this first' are the most popular page for the search you entered. It is strongly recommended that you try these pages. For other entries, the number of stars that are displayed indicate how relevant that result is to what you searched for. The more stars, the more likely the page is what you are looking for.
  2. Title The title of the page. This is also a link to go to that page. The title also tells you which of the main site sections the page is found in.
  3. Description A short description of the information available on the page.
Navigation If there are more than 10 results (or 20 if you elected to search and show titles only) to your search the system will only display the 10 (or 20) most relevant results by default. You can use these links to view the other results, in groups of 10 (or 20).
 

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This page was last reviewed on: 02 February 2012