Search tips

Text search

The Housebuilder website article archive makes full use of current boolean searching techniques, enabling you to simply find any article you are looking for from our vast library, stretching back to 2000.
Following are some tips on how to use boolean searching:

Single word/phrase (match all)

Simply enter any single word, or phrase into the search field. The database will bring back ALL matches of this word or words, ranking them by amount of times the word was found, and proximity to the beginning of the article. Note that if you have searched on a phrase, articles containing EITHER word will be returned, but articles matching BOTH words will have a higher ranking.
For example: Entering Home Information Packs would return all documents containing the word 'Home' OR 'Information' OR 'Packs' OR any combination of the three, in any order.

Exact matching

To search for an exact phrase within a document, surround the phrase in quotation marks - this will return only documents that have the exact phrase, in the exact order.
For example: Entering "Home Information Packs" will only return documents that contain the exact phrase "Home Information Packs", ranking will be given to documents where the phrase is found more often, and closer to the beginning of the document.

'+' searches

Entering '+' before any word will ensure that the word must be found within the document. This enables you to search for multiple words in a document, ensuring that they are all returned.
For example: Entering +Home +Information +Packs will only return documents that contain all three words, but they can be in any order.

'-' searches

Entering '-' before any word will ensure that only documents NOT CONTAINING the word will be returned.
For example: Entering +Home +Information -Packs will only return documents that contain the words 'Home' and 'Information' (in any order) but DO NOT contain the word 'Packs'

Date filtering

You may limit the results returned on your search by selecting a date period to search on.
To search on a specific date, select the day, month and year from from the date options.
Alternatively, to limit your search just to a month, just choose the month and year, leaving the date option blank.
Finally, to just search on a particular year, select the year from the date option, while leaving the date and month fields unselected.

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