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Search tips

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  • Your search did not return any results
  • Your search returned too many results
  • Notes on the search engine

    • Your search did not return any results

    • Ensure that all words are spelled correctly.
    • Try different keywords or synonyms to describe the item for which you are searching.
    • Try more general keywords.
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    Your search returned too many results

    • Use more search words. You can include up to 255 characters.
    • Use quotes around a word or phase to search for an exact match – “Higher Education Review”. You can enter more that one word or phase to refine your search. For example, the search phase “HECS” “PELS”, would return all pages that contain both HECS and PELS.
    • Use more specific keywords. For example, rather than searching for “programme” search for the name of a specific programme.
    • Use a “Refine Search” to search within a search results list.
    • Use a “Advanced Search” option to:
      • Do a Boolean search such as AND, OR and AND NOT
      • Do a search based on Sector
      • Do a search based on File Type such as MS Word, Excel etc.
      • Filter search results based on the date the page was last updated.
    • Use a “Publications Search” if you are searching for a DEST publication.
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    Notes on the search engine

    • The search engine automatically includes variations of words based upon the base stem, such as plurals. For example, searching for the word “page” also returns results for “pages.”
    • The search engine automatically ignores common words such as “the,” “it,” and “by” as well as single-digit numbers.
    • The search engine is not case sensitive.
    • If more that one search word is entered, then pages which contain all the search words will returned at the top of the results list. 

      For example: a search for Future directions would return to the top of search results list all pages that contain the words future and directions, followed by pages which contain the word future and then pages which contain the word directions.
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