Eight tips for smart searching

1. Type keyword(s) in the search box, then click the Search button beneath it.

2. If you type in more than one word, they are automatically connected with AND. (For example: boys girls = boys AND girls = boys, girls. Type any of these to find both words in the same page.)

3. Connect your keywords with OR to find all pages with either one word or the other, or both. (For example: boys OR girls. This will find all pages that mention boys or girls or both.)

4. Put speech marks around a phrase if you want to find those exact words in that order. (For example: "diagnostic assessment". If you don't use the speech marks, each word in the phrase will be searched separately, and you will get a lot of irrelevant results.)

5. Use the asterisk to look for words with the same stem. (For example: type assess* to find assess, assessing, assessment, assessed and so on.)

6. If you get too many results you can use the AND NOT connector to exclude certain words from your search.
   (For example, to find pages that mention just boys, not girls, type in: boys AND NOT girls)

7. Note: the search function ignores certain 'stop words' in phrases. 'Stop words' are not indexed by the search engine and so are ignored in your search. Currently 'stop words' are: AND OR NOT NEAR

8. If you need further help with searching,
   email: help@nzcer.org.nz.