Broadening Searches

Sometimes a simple search produces a disappointing results list. The query may not locate any matching documents, the results list may be too short, or the documents in the results list may not contain the information you are looking for. In these instances, you may need to broaden your search in order to retrieve a more promising results list.

OR Operator

If your simple search has not produced a useful results list, you may have used the wrong term in your query. To increase the chances of finding a document that matches your query, you can use the OR operator with many synonymous or closely related terms. For example, if you want to retrieve documents concerning seafood, enter this query:

The OR operator finds pages that match at least one the terms in the query. You may find documents that match crab, but not lobster or shrimp. The pages may also contain more than one term.