Search Tips

Basic Search

Enter your keywords and phrases in the Search text box. Press the "Go" button to process. Special Query Terms: Include Query Term - Place a "+" sign before an essential word to include it within all search results (eg: animal +health). Exclude Query Term - Place a "-" sign before a term that you want to exclude from the search results (eg: imports -dairy). Phrase Search - Search for complete phrases by enclosing them in quotation marks or connecting them with hyphens (eg: "food guide pyramid"). Boolean OR Search - Use an uppercase OR between terms to retrieve information that contains either word A or word B (eg: food OR nutrition). Title Search - Place "intitle:" in front of a query term to restrict results to documents containing that word in the title (eg: intitle:USDA). Title Search (all) - Initiate search terms by "allintitle:" to restrict results to those with all of the query words in the title (eg: allintitle: food safety). URL Search (term) - Place "inurl:" before a query term to restrict the results to documents containing that word in the result URL (eg: inurl:USDA). URL Search (all) - Initiate search terms by "allinurl:" to restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the result URL (eg: allinurl: USDA gov).

Advanced Search

The Advanced Search offers the same functionality as the Basic Search, but it also provides additional options for reducing the total number of search results. Limit your results with extra search options: Return results where specified keywords and phrases occur in location subgroups. Return results where specified keywords and phrases occur in subject subgroups. Return pages written in any language, English, or Spanish. Return results where specified keywords and phrases occur anywhere in the page, in the title of the page, or in the URL of the page. Choose how your search results display: Choose the number of results you would like per page. Sort the results by relevance or by date.