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Tips for making the most of search

How to start a search

You can find a search box on almost every page of the Ofcom website at the top right of your browser window. To start your search, type your search phrase then press ‘Go’. If you use accesskeys, you can use accesskey 4 to start your search.

Refining your search

To refine your search, you can filter the full set of results returned to you by selecting a specific collection - a type of document or section of the website - using the drop down menu and then pressing ‘Search’.

Sorting results by date or relevance

You can also sort the results returned to you - by default the documents and web pages that match your query are returned in date order with the most recent publication appearing at the top of the page. Click on the ‘Sort by relevance’ link to use Google’s logic to reorder these matches.

Filtering by file type, excluding specific words or searching just document titles

If you want to restrict matches so, for example, PDF files are ignored, use the File Format filter on our advanced search and select from the menus so the search states ‘Don’t return results of the file format Adobe Acrobat PDF’.

To exclude words enter them into the ‘without the words’ box. To search only titles select the Occurrences drop down menu so the search states ‘Return results where my terms occur in the title of the page’.

With these advanced filtering options it’s possible to build precise queries but be aware that being too restrictive may result in no matches found.

Check the spelling

Always try and spell your search phrase correctly. Google’s built in spell checker may make suggestions for search terms that will find similar results but it uses US English and may be unfamiliar with some of the more technical information on the Ofcom website.

Use more words

Using multiple words in your search will help to find more accurate results. Using too many though could bring back 0 possible matches so try to find a happy medium.

Using capitals

Google searches on the Ofcom website are not case sensitive.

Use quotation marks

If you only want to see results that match an exact phrase, put your phrase inside quote marks. You can use our advanced search for more options on restricting matches and refer to the Google ‘manual’ for further tips on advanced operators

Refine your results to a particular section of the Ofcom website

Once you have performed a quick search you can filter the matches displayed by selecting from the drop down collections menu. A collection is a content category and on the Ofcom website we have set these up to match out sector navigation and main publication types: TV, Radio, Consultations, etc.

How to search the Legacy Regulator Archives

When you search the Ofcom website, results from the Legacy Regulator Archives (linked from http://www.ofcom.org.uk/regulator_archives/) are excluded by default. To view results from the Legacy Regulator Archives, make sure you choose the Legacy Regulator Archives collection from the drop down menu on the search results page.

Searching within PDFs and other types of documents

The Ofcom search will return results found within PDFs and other documents such as Microsoft Word or RTF format files. If a search result was found within a document the document type will be displayed next to the title and the file content may also be available in text format recorded as Google indexes the website.

You may need to download and install extra software to view certain documents. See our technical details page for more information.