Keyword Search

or

Help with searching

Keyword searching helps you find pages anywhere on the Heritage Open Days Site. You tell the search engine what you're looking for by typing words and phrases into the search box. The search engine responds by giving you a list of all the pages (known as hits) which match your request. In addition, you can also go directory to the town and county pages of the event directory.

To do a keyword search:

  1. Type your words into the search box.
  2. Click the Search button or press the Enter key to start your search.
  3. Click on the hit titles to view the pages found by your search.

Hits are presented as a numbered list. Each hit includes the title, short description, URL, size, last update date and score of its corresponding page on the site. Each hit title is a link to its corresponding page. Each score is a measure of a hit's relevance in comparison to all the other hits produced by the search. The most relevant hits will appear at the top of your results.

If there are more than 10 hits, the search engine will return the first 10 hits, along with links to the rest. It also re-displays the search form containing your most recent search, so that you can change it, or refine it, and search again.

When searching, think of a word as any combination of letters and numbers which is not broken by spaces. For example, the search engine thinks that Victorian, Church, 1908 and c1900 are all words. You can also look for a phrase by enclosing words in double quotation marks. For example, "Victorian Church".

Searches are not case sensitive or sensitive to character accents. For example, searching for Victorian and vicTorian will give the same results, and words containing e, é or è will give the same results.

More Search Options

match ANY word
This is the default setting. For example, searching for Victorian Church (match Any words) will return hits that contain either Victorian or Church (although those hits which contain both words will be listed first).
match All words
this is a more specific search. For example, searching for Victorian Church (match All words) will only return hits that contain both Victorian and Church.
use a wildcard (*)
By typing an * within a word, you can match up to four letters or digits. For example, searching for Victor* will return hits which contain Victor, Victory, Victoria, or Victorian.
use a phrase
to match an exact sequence of words. For example, searching for "Victorian Church" (note the double quotes) will return only hits which contain Victorian followed directly by Church. Phrases are also useful for including simple words such as and, in and or in a search, because the search engine normally ignores these common words.
exclude or include words
To exclude a word from your hits, place a minus (-) symbol before the word in the search box. To include a word in your hits, place the plus (+) symbol before the word in the search box. For example, searching for Church +Victorian -Georgian will return hits which contain both Church and Victorian but not those that also contain Georgian.