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Shortcuts to topics further down this page Search Features
Basic Search
Search Results
Results per Page
Refine Your Selections
Search Suggestions
Sort Option
 
Advanced Search
Find Results Option
Keyword Occurrences
Search by Format

More Search Techniques
Automatic "and" Queries
"OR" Searches
Does Capitalization Matter?
Does Search Observe Stop Words?
Does Search Use Stemming?
Excluding Words
Phrase Searches
Advanced Operators

Search Features

Basic Search
To perform a search, type in one or more words and press the Enter key or click the Search button for a list of relevant results. Search uses sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search.
 
When a search is initiated from a country or geographic section of the site, it will search only the pages for that location.
 
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Search Results
The most relevant pages appear at the top of your results. Each result displays a page title which links to the page, a summary, date, and content type. In the summary, your search terms are displayed in bold text so that you can quickly determine if that result is from a page you want to visit.
 
Results with a key displayed next to them indicate that registration is required to view that Web page. When you click the link you are prompted for your registered e-mail address and password or you are given the opportunity to register if you have not already done so.
 
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Results per Page
The Search Results displays ten (10) results per page, by default. But you can specific the number of results you want per page, ranging from ten (10) to a hundred (100).
 
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Refine Your Selections
This is a convenient way to limit your search results by industry topics, cross-industry topics, location, date, a particular type of content (i.e. events, services content, client successes content, or research and insight content), or by page format (i.e. article, PDF, podcast, or video).
 
Search will provide a filtered set of results based on the items you select.
 
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Search Suggestions
The search suggestions feature delivers suggested search terms based on the key words you are entering into the search field. If you see a suggested term you wish to search on, you can just stop typing, select the term and click.
 
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Sort Option
The Sort by Relevance feature will position results with the highest relevancy score in the top of the list. Search uses sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. For instance, search analyzes not only the candidate page, but also the pages linking into it to determine the value of the candidate page for your search. Search also prefers pages in which your query terms are near each other.
 
The Sort by Date feature sorts and presents your search results based on date. The date of each file is returned in the results. Results that do not contain dates are displayed at the end, sorted by relevance.
 
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Advanced Search

Find Results Option
You can specify additional search parameters around the search word(s) you enter so that it either searches for all the words entered, the exact phrase entered, or any one of the words entered, You also have the option to specify a word that you do not want included in the search results.
 
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Keyword Occurrences
This feature allows you to limit your search based on where the keyword appears on the page. You can specify results that will show only those pages where the keyword is displayed anywhere in the page, in the title of the page only, or in the URL only.

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Search by Format
Search by format is a convenient way to limit your search results to the format of the article, such as PDF, Audio, Video, or Flash formats.

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More Search Techniques

Automatic "and" Queries
By default, search only returns pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include "and" between terms. For example, to search for human resources outsourcing documents, enter:
 
To broaden or restrict the search, include fewer or more terms

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"OR" Searches
Search supports the logical "OR" operator. To retrieve pages that include either word A or word B, use an uppercase "OR" between terms. For example, to search for an office in either London or Paris, enter:
 


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Does Capitalization Matter?
Searches are not case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you enter them, are understood as lower case. For example, searches for "new york," "New York," and "New york" all return the same results.

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Does Search Observe Stop Words?
Search ignores common words and characters known as stop words. These include most pronouns and articles. Search automatically disregards such terms as "where" and "how," as well as certain single digits and single letters. These terms rarely help to narrow a search and can significantly slow searching. If you want to use stop words in your search, use the "+" sign or enclose your phrase containing stop words in quotation marks. Make sure that you include a space before the "+" sign.
 
For example, to search for Annual Report Version I:

You can also include the "+" sign in phrase searches.

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Does Search Use Stemming?
To provide the most accurate results, search does not use "stemming" or support "wildcard" searches. Rather, it searches for exactly the words that you enter into the search box.
For example, searching for "airlin" or "airlin*" will not yield "airline" or "airlines." If in doubt, try both forms, for example: "airline" and "airlines."
 
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Excluding Words
You can exclude a word from your search by putting a minus sign ("-") immediately in front of the term you want to exclude. Make sure you include a space before the minus sign.
 
For example, the search

will return pages about technology that do not contain the word "information."

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Phrase Searches
You can search for phrases by adding quotation marks. Words enclosed in double quotes ("like this") appear together in all returned documents. Phrase searches using quotation marks are useful when searching for specific articles or specific names.

Certain characters serve as phrase connectors. Phrase connectors work like quotes because they join your search words in the same way double quotes join your search words. For example, the search:
 
 is treated as a phrase search even though the search words are not enclosed in double quotes. Search recognizes hyphens, slashes, periods, equal signs, and apostrophes as phrase connectors.

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Advanced Operators
Search supports several advanced operators, which are query words with special functions. A list of the advanced operators with explanation is provided below.

Note: You can enter the advanced operators as they appear below, or you can select most of them from the dropdown menus on the Advanced Search page.

link:
The query [link:] enables you to restrict your search to all pages that link to the query page. To do this, use the [link:sampledomain.com] syntax in the search box.

allintitle:
If you start a query with [allintitle:], the results are restricted to documents with all of the query words in the document's HTML title. For example, [allintitle: accenture events] only returns documents that have both "accenture" and "events" in the HTML title.

intitle:
If you include [intitle:] in your query, the search is restricted to results with documents containing that word in the HTML title. For example, [intitle:accenture events] returns documents that mention the word "accenture" in their HTML title, and mention the word "events" anywhere in the document either in the title or anywhere else in the document.

Note: There can be no space between the "intitle:" and the following word. Putting [intitle:] in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting [allintitle:] at the front of your query. For example, [intitle:accenture intitle:events] is the same as [allintitle: accenture events].

allinurl:
If you start a query with [allinurl:], the search is restricted to results with all of the query words in the URL. For example, [allinurl: accenture events] returns only documents that have both "accenture" and "events" in the URL.

Note: [allinurl:] works on words, not URL components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, [allinurl: accenture/events] restricts the results to page with the words "accenture" and "events" in the URL, but doesn't require that they be separated by a slash within that URL, that they be adjacent, or that they be in that particular word order. There is currently no way to enforce these constraints.

inurl:
If you include [inurl:] in your query, the results are restricted to documents containing that word in the URL. For example, [inurl:accenture events] returns documents that mention the word "accenture" in their URL and mention the word "events" anywhere in the document either in the URL or anywhere else in the document. Note: There can be no space between the "inurl:" and the following word.

Note: [inurl:] works on words, not URL components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, in the query [accenture inurl:accenture/events], the inurl: operator affects only the [second] word "accenture," which is the single word following the inurl: operator, and does not affect the word "events." The query [accenture inurl:accenture inurl:events] can be used to require both "accenture" and "events" to be in the URL.

Putting [inurl:] in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting [allinurl:] at the front of your query. For example, [inurl:accenture inurl:events] is the same as [allinurl: accenture events].

Search supports several advanced operators, which are query words with special functions. A list of the advanced operators with explanation is provided below.

Note: You can enter the advanced operators as they appear below, or you can select most of them from the dropdown menus on the Advanced Search page.

link:
The query [link:] enables you to restrict your search to all pages that link to the query page. To do this, use the [link:sampledomain.com] syntax in the search box.

allintitle:
If you start a query with [allintitle:], the results are restricted to documents with all of the query words in the document's HTML title. For example, [allintitle: accenture events] only returns documents that have both "accenture" and "events" in the HTML title.

intitle:
If you include [intitle:] in your query, the search is restricted to results with documents containing that word in the HTML title. For example, [intitle:accenture events] returns documents that mention the word "accenture" in their HTML title, and mention the word "events" anywhere in the document either in the title or anywhere else in the document.

Note: There can be no space between the "intitle:" and the following word. Putting [intitle:] in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting [allintitle:] at the front of your query. For example, [intitle:accenture intitle:events] is the same as [allintitle: accenture events].

allinurl:
If you start a query with [allinurl:], the search is restricted to results with all of the query words in the URL. For example, [allinurl: accenture events] returns only documents that have both "accenture" and "events" in the URL.

Note: [allinurl:] works on words, not URL components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, [allinurl: accenture/events] restricts the results to page with the words "accenture" and "events" in the URL, but doesn't require that they be separated by a slash within that URL, that they be adjacent, or that they be in that particular word order. There is currently no way to enforce these constraints.

inurl:
If you include [inurl:] in your query, the results are restricted to documents containing that word in the URL. For example, [inurl:accenture events] returns documents that mention the word "accenture" in their URL and mention the word "events" anywhere in the document either in the URL or anywhere else in the document. Note: There can be no space between the "inurl:" and the following word.

Note: [inurl:] works on words, not URL components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, in the query [accenture inurl:accenture/events], the inurl: operator affects only the [second] word "accenture," which is the single word following the inurl: operator, and does not affect the word "events." The query [accenture inurl:accenture inurl:events] can be used to require both "accenture" and "events" to be in the URL.

Putting [inurl:] in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting [allinurl:] at the front of your query. For example, [inurl:accenture inurl:events] is the same as [allinurl: accenture events].

Search supports several advanced operators, which are query words with special functions. A list of the advanced operators with explanation is provided below.

Note: You can enter the advanced operators as they appear below, or you can select most of them from the dropdown menus on the Advanced Search page.

link:
The query [link:] enables you to restrict your search to all pages that link to the query page. To do this, use the [link:sampledomain.com] syntax in the search box.

allintitle:
If you start a query with [allintitle:], the results are restricted to documents with all of the query words in the document's HTML title. For example, [allintitle: accenture events] only returns documents that have both "accenture" and "events" in the HTML title.

intitle:
If you include [intitle:] in your query, the search is restricted to results with documents containing that word in the HTML title. For example, [intitle:accenture events] returns documents that mention the word "accenture" in their HTML title, and mention the word "events" anywhere in the document either in the title or anywhere else in the document.

Note: There can be no space between the "intitle:" and the following word. Putting [intitle:] in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting [allintitle:] at the front of your query. For example, [intitle:accenture intitle:events] is the same as [allintitle: accenture events].

allinurl:
If you start a query with [allinurl:], the search is restricted to results with all of the query words in the URL. For example, [allinurl: accenture events] returns only documents that have both "accenture" and "events" in the URL.

Note: [allinurl:] works on words, not URL components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, [allinurl: accenture/events] restricts the results to page with the words "accenture" and "events" in the URL, but doesn't require that they be separated by a slash within that URL, that they be adjacent, or that they be in that particular word order. There is currently no way to enforce these constraints.

inurl:
If you include [inurl:] in your query, the results are restricted to documents containing that word in the URL. For example, [inurl:accenture events] returns documents that mention the word "accenture" in their URL and mention the word "events" anywhere in the document either in the URL or anywhere else in the document. Note: There can be no space between the "inurl:" and the following word.

Note: [inurl:] works on words, not URL components. In particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, in the query [accenture inurl:accenture/events], the inurl: operator affects only the [second] word "accenture," which is the single word following the inurl: operator, and does not affect the word "events." The query [accenture inurl:accenture inurl:events] can be used to require both "accenture" and "events" to be in the URL.

Putting [inurl:] in front of every word in your query is equivalent to putting [allinurl:] at the front of your query. For example, [inurl:accenture inurl:events] is the same as [allinurl: accenture events].

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