Check Spelling 
 Use Multiple Words 
 Use Similar Words 
 Appropriate Capitalization 
 Quotation Marks 
 Plus (+) or Minus (-) 
 Wildcards 
 Field Searches 

• Check Spelling (Unique option to our site!):   Make sure your search terms are spelled correctly. If you are not sure, go to " Advanced Search " and make sure that "Sound-Alike Matching" is checked. This will attempt to find words that sound similar to your search terms, but it's always best to try to spell the search terms correctly.
  
  
• Use Multiple Words (Works in most Search Engines):  Use multiple words: Using multiple words will return more refined results than a single word. For example, typing [ panama resort ] will return more relevant results than typing just [ resort ]. (Keep in mind that relevant results are returned even if they don't contain all query terms. Those at the top of the list will have the most matches.)
  
  
• Use Similar Words (Results Vary by Search Engine):   The more similar words you use in a search, the more relevant your results will be. For example try [ Panama PA pana ] would find all of the most popular ways to list our Country.
  
  
• Use Appropriate Capitalization (Unique option to our site!):   Capitalize proper nouns, and remember that lower-case words will match any case. For example, typing [ panama ] will return all documents containing the words "panama", "Panama", and "PANAMA". Typing [Panama], however, will instruct the search engine to look only for the capitalized word.
  
  
• Use Quotation Marks to find Exact Phrase (Works in some Search Engines):
  • Search on the phrase [ Panama Resort ] and the search function will return every page that contains the words "Panama" and "Resort". On this site, 55 pages were returned!
  • You can narrow the search by placing the phrase in quotation marks. Searching on [ "Panama Resort" ] narrows the search to 12 pages that contain the exact phrase.
    
    
• Use Plus (+) or Minus (-) (Works in most Search Engines):
  • Use a plus sign when your search term or phrase must appear in the search results. Use a minus sign to indicate undesirable term(s). The plus sign tells the search engine that a certain word or phrase is required in the search results, and a minus sign indicates that a word or phrase must be absent in the search results.
  • Note: A phrase must be contained within quotation marks. Leave no spaces between the plus or minus sign and the term.
  • Note: if you are using the Advanced Search Form with radio buttons for "any," "all," and "phrase," then plus and minus can only be used when the "any" radio button is selected. Plus and minus are ignored if the "all" or "phrase" radio buttons are selected.
  
  
  
• Use Wildcards (Unique option to our site!):
  • Wildcard searches can expand the number of matches for a particular request. The * character is used as the wildcard character.
  • For instance, searching for [ wh* ] will find the words what, why, when, whether, and any other word that starts with wh. Searching for [ *her* ] will find the words here, whether, together, gathering, and any other word that contains her anywhere in the word.
  • Wildcards may be combined with the standard plus (+) and minus (-) modifiers, quotes for phrases, as well as the field search specifiers. +wh* -se*ch will find all pages which have a word that starts with wh and which does not contain a word that starts with se and ends with ch. "wh* are" will find the phrases where are, what are, why are, etc.
  
  
  
• Use Field Searches (Unique option to our site!):
  • Field searches allow you to create specific searches for words that appear in a specific part of a document. A field search can be performed on body text (body:), title text (title:), alt text (alt:), meta description (desc:), meta key words (keys:), URL (url:) or meta target key words (target:). The field name should be in lower-case and immediately followed by a colon. There should be no spaces between the colon and the search term.
  • Note: The field searches can only be followed by a word or phrase. Phrases must be contained within quotation marks.
  • Note: if you are using the Advanced Search Form with a list box for the field name, then field names can only be entered before a word or phrase when the "any" option is selected. Specific field names are ignored if any other Advanced Search Form field is selected in the list box.
  • Examples:
    title:about
    desc:rocky
    keys:horse
    body:security
    url:help
    alt:"join now"
    
    OR USE ADVANCED SEARCH!