FREEFIND SEARCH TIPS

By default the search engine tries to locate pages which have exact matches for all of the words entered in your search query. If that fails, it then tries to locate pages which contain any words in your search query. If that happens a short message is displayed at the top of the search results indicating this has been done. Searches are not case sensitive so RADCLIFFE, Radcliffe and radcliffe will return the same results.

In addition, there are several ways to modify the default search behaviour:

If a query is entered in speech marks the phrase contained within is required to be on the page. If entered in square brackets "[]" a close match (within a few words) will be returned. If entered in braces "{}" a far (within several words) match will be returned.

Example: "IAAF World Indoor Championships" or [IAAF World Indoor Championships]

If you prepend a word with + that word is required to be on the page.
If you prepend a word with - that word is required to not be on the page.

Example: +Radcliffe -Paula
will find pages with Radcliffe but not Paula.

If a query word ends with a * all words on a page which start the same way as that query word will match.

Example: Rad*
will find pages with Radcliffe, Radford, Radzinski etc.

If a query word contains a ? any character will match that position.

Example: Ra?cliffe
will find pages with Radcliffe, Ratcliffe etc.

A query may contain AND, OR, NOT (these must be in uppercase).

Example: (McColgan AND Radcliffe) OR (Christie AND Chambers)
will find pages containing both McColgan and Radcliffe or pages containing both Christie and Chambers.

All of these techniques can be combined:

Example: +Rad* -P??l*

Searching sections of the website:

There are discrete search boxes on the index pages for the main sub-sections of this website (e.g. Olympic Games Medallists, UK All-Time Lists and Records etc.). These will automatically restrict searches to pages in those sections. Visitors can, however, limit searches to other groups of pages by including a keyword in the search (such searches should be undertaken from the home page or box below).

Example: "Paula Radcliffe" AND Highlights
will search British Athletics Highlights pages for references to Paula Radcliffe.

Example: "Sharon Rendle" AND Judo
will search all Judo pages for references to Sharon Rendle.

Unrecognised Characters:

As the search engine only recognises standard English and West European characters some non-standard characters (e.g. &,š,Š,ž,Ž) are replaced by spaces in the index. To find names containing these characters substitute with a space in the search string.

Example: "Inna Polu kina"
will find pages with Inna Poluškina.

Example: "Medway Maidstone"
will find pages with Medway & Maidstone.

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