Searching the site
Quick search
To find pages on a particular subject area enter a word (e.g.
benefit) into the search box and click the Find button. You
can also enter more than one word (e.g. council tax), but don't
bother padding your search text with smaller words e.g. to, the,
and etc. Just enter the keywords that relate to what you're trying
to find.
Search results
A search will normally result in a number of suggested pages
being displayed. An extract from each page is displayed so that you
can find the page which best matches your requirements. Click the
link to view the corresponding page.
When a large number of suggestions arise from a search these are
divided into a number of search result pages. You can move from one
search results page to another using the 'previous', 'next', or
page number links at the bottom of each page.
If a search results in too many pages, then refine your search
by adding extra keywords, for example 'council tax' instead of just
'tax'.
If a search results in no pages, you need to widen the scope of
your search. For example, 'council tax rates' instead of 'aspatria
council tax band B rate'.
Search tips
Keep it simple
Keep your search simple - a query made up of two or three
words will usually provide relevant results. You can always
refine your search if you get too many results.
Searching for an exact phrase
All of the words that you enter will be used to return search
results. The order they are in will also be used to determine which
pages are most relevant. If you want to make sure that the search
results will contain all of the words you enter in exactly the same
order, however, place double quotes ("") around the words e.g
"freephone telephone".
Common words
Certain common words are ignored when used in your search as
they do not help to provide useful results. Examples include "to",
"of"', "is", "where" and "how". A message will be displayed above
the search results informing you of any words that have been
ignored in your search query.
If a common word is important to your search however, you can
make sure it is not ignored by putting a "+" sign in front of it.
This could be used in a search query as follows: +where +is
Allerdale house. Note that there must be a space before
each plus sign.
Common words will also not be ignored if they are included
in double quotes as part of an exact phrase query.
Using "and" / "or" to refine your search
The word "and" will be ignored when used in search queries. This
is because it is sometimes used by searchers to tell the search to
consider extra words e.g taxis and minibuses and
trains but the search would consider all of those words
anyway. So the search query taxis minibuses
trains would return the same results, making the use of
'and' unnecessary.
Using the word "OR" (must be in uppercase) will let you search
on either of the words that the "OR" comes between. For example the
search query web statistics 2008 OR 2009 will
return pages that contain either the words web statistics 2008 or
web statistics 2009 while the query web statistics 2008
2009 without the "OR" would also return results that
include both of those years on the same page.
Excluding certain words
To refine your search, you may want to exclude any
pages that contain a certain word from the results. To tell
the search which words you want to avoid, put a minus sign (-)
before the word in your search query, e.g the search
council tax exemption -unoccupied would
return pages relevant to council tax exemptions but would exclude
any pages that contained the word unoccupied.
Advanced search
There is an 'advanced search' link on our search results page.
This lets you perform a search using many of the tips and
techniques explained above in an easy to use way.
Simple is still best
The tips above are useful in certain circumstances and can be
handy to refine your search if required. In most cases however, the
search will return the most useful results for your query
when you enter just two or three words which are relevant
to the information you are interested in.