How to search with UK Plus

Searching on UK Plus is a simple affair - just type your keyword (or keywords) into the search box and then click the Search button. In the unlikely event that you do not find what you're looking for straight away, here are some handy hints to help you on your way:

Hints and tips:

• Too many results? Try using more keywords to make your search more specific. The more words you use, the smaller the results set will be
• Too few matches? Be less specific with your search: either use more general vocabulary or fewer words
• Can't find a product that you're looking for? Check your spelling carefully - especially for names of people and products. If you misspell something, results will be either thin on the ground or nonexistent
• Try using synonyms, like bicycle instead of bike
• Use alternative spellings - you may have spelled all of the words in your search correctly, but has the site you're looking for? Try using American spellings (theater) instead of English ones (theatre), or common misspellings - e.g. acomodation instead of accommodation

Results - Featured Sites

UK Plus will attempt to respond in two ways to every keyword search you make. First the search returns a collection of results called Featured Sites. These links will take you to websites matching the search terms you have entered and are provided by our cost-per-click partner, Espotting. Companies listed in the featured sites section of the results have paid for the privilege, but have been vetted carefully, categorised and indexed by a team of editors to make sure that the results provided are accurate, relevant and fast.

Web search results

The second set of results is a list of specific web pages, which is specially biased toward retrieving pages from the United Kingdom. To locate these pages for you, UK Plus searches through a vast database - millions of web pages in size - matching your terms to the text found on those pages. If we find no Featured Sites for your search, these Web search results will appear, automatically, at the top of your search results page.

Advanced search facilities

The UK Plus search is optimised to provide the best possible match for the keywords that you have entered. If you're feeling adventurous and want to start fine tuning your search, however, there are some advanced techniques you can use:

• You may want to exclude terms from your search. If you are looking for information about Sheffield but want to exclude sites and pages about the city's football clubs, type a minus sign immediately before the word you want to exclude: -football
• Using double quotes ensures that the search looks only for the specified phrase. A search for "slug control pellets", for instance, retrieves only documents containing exactly that phrase. Searching without quotes will retrieve documents containing all three words, but these may not be next to each other.
• UK Plus also supports the use of brackets as well as the Boolean terms AND, NOT and OR. You can use these to group search words and narrow down your search even more. The search Sheffield NOT (fc OR "football club"), for example, retrieves pages containing the word Sheffield but not the words fc or the exact phrase "football club". Boolean search terms must always be typed in capital letters

Clean and safe

UK Plus operates a no-adult content policy, which means that all unsavoury content is filtered out before it gets to you. So you don’t need to worry about bumping into anything unpleasant while you enjoy your rummage around the web.