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Use more words

The FoodSmart Program will give you better results if you are more specific. So, instead of typing in just the word (for example) 'rabbits', you would be well advised to type in a string of words such as 'raising rabbits in temperate climates'. If you asked the search engine to 'Present results as a list of matching resources' it would rank the resources where it found most matches on all these words at the top of the returned results. The results with the highest score would be those where the search engine found ALL words in the resource.

Use the 'star' character (*)

The 'star' character is shift+8 on your keyboard.

If you type in 'rabbit*', the FoodSmart Program will return results for all words which have 'rabbit' in them. For example, it will pick up on 'rabbits', 'rabbiting', 'rabbiter', etc.

Use quote marks for exact phrases

If you want the FoodSmart Program to find ONLY exact phrases, put quote marks (" ") around your search query. For example, the search string "rabbiting in Victoria" will only return results from pages where all words appear together and in the order that you typed them.

Use 'and', 'not' and 'or'

The FoodSmart Program responds to the Boolean method of searching. This means that you can refine your query by adding certain words such as 'and', 'not' and 'or' to the words you are searching for.

AND - Words separated by 'and' tells the FoodSmart Program to return results ONLY where ALL the terms requested are present. For example, if you searched for 'rabbits and Victoria' the results would ignore resources where only one of the words appeared. It would only return results where BOTH of the words appeared.

OR - Words separated by a space, a comma or the word 'or' will return results from resources where ANY of the words appear.

NOT - If you wanted to avoid getting results on particular words, precede these words with the word 'not'. For example, if you didn't want results returned to you regarding 'rabbiting', then you should type in 'rabbits not rabbiting'.

Other hints

• The FoodSmart Program gives you results in sets of 10. You will need to click on 'Next 10' to see the next results.
• The FoodSmart Program is not case sensitive. This means that it doesn't matter whether you use upper case characters (ABCDE) or lower case characters (abcde).
• The most relevant results are listed at the top of the list.
• The more specific you can be, the better your results will be.

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To search the FoodSmart database, type in your request below and click the "Search" button. (Search tips)