Search Tips
Topics:
The Basic Search
To enter a query, type in a few descriptive words and press the Enter key or click the Go button for a list of relevant results.
The UN search engine uses sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. For instance, it analyzes not only the candidate page, but also the pages linking into it to determine the value of the candidate page for your search. The UN Search also prefers pages in which your query terms are near each other.
Note: Encrypted, viewable PDF documents are converted to HTML for indexing; however, the HTML is not displayed.
Spelling
The UN standard is UK English. British spelling is used (i.e. colour, labour, programme). A single spelling suggestion is returned with the results for queries where the spell checker has detected a possible spelling mistake.
The spell checker feature is context sensitive. For example, if the query submitted is "gail divers," "gail devers" is suggested as an alternative query. However, "scuba divers" would not return an alternate query suggestion.
Note: Currently, the spell checker supports only US English.
Synonyms
Synonyms are other words that have the same or similar meanings. They are displayed as "Other suggested searches" on the results page.
The Advanced Search: customizing search results
To enter a query, type in a few descriptive words in the keyword box provided. You can then customize your search query by making use of the various options available on the Advanced Search page as outlined below:
Matching: You can select one of three options to match all the keywords you have entered in the keyword box, or any of the words you have entered, or you can request the search engine to retrieve the exact phrase
Area: You can search the entire site or limit your search to any one of the areas listed in the drop down menu: News, Press Releases, Global Issues, Economic and Social Affairs or International Law.
Limit by Language: You can limit your search to any one of the six UN official languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian or Spanish).
Note: For Arabic you must enter the keyword(s) in Arabic. While this is not necessary for the other languages, better search results are obtained if you enter keywords in the language that you want to limit the search to. Additionally, the United Nations uses the British spelling of English words and Simplified Chinese.
Limit by Date: You can request Web pages that were updated in the past 3 months, 6 months, year or anytime.
Limit by File Type: You can limit your search results to Web pages (.html, .htm, .asp, .shtml, or .nsf) Adobe Acrobat PDF files, Microsoft WORD files (.doc) or Microsoft PowerPoint files (.ppt).
Viewing results: You can view the results of your search 10 at a time or in groupings of 25, 50, 75, or 100.
Once you have customized your search query press the Enter key or click the Go button for a list of relevant results.
Sorting by Date
The Sort by Date feature sorts and presents your search results based on date. The date of each file is returned in the results. Results that do not contain dates are displayed at the end, sorted by relevance.
Automatic "and" Queries
By default, the UN search engine only returns pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include "and" between terms. For example, to search for security council resolutions, enter:
To broaden or restrict the search, include fewer or more terms.
"OR" Searches
The UN search engine supports the logical "OR" operator. To retrieve pages that include either word A or word B, use an uppercase "OR" between terms. For example, to search for a United Nations Information Centre (UNIC) office in either Buenos Aires or Rio, enter:
See Your Search Terms in the Results
Every search result lists one or more excerpts from the web page to display how your search terms are used in context on that page. In the excerpt, your search terms are displayed in bold text so that you can quickly determine if that result is from a page you want to visit.
Does Capitalization Matter?
Searches are not case sensitive. All letters, regardless of how you enter them, are understood as lower case. For example, searches for "kofi annan," "Kofi Annan," and "Kofi annan" all return the same results.
Does the UN Search Engine Observe Stop Words?
The UN search engine ignores common words and characters known as stop words. These include most pronouns and articles. It automatically disregards such terms as "where" and "how," as well as certain single digits and single letters. These terms rarely help to narrow a search and can significantly slow searching. If you want to use stop words in your search, use the "+" sign or enclose your phrase containing stop words in quotation marks. Make sure that you include a space before the "+" sign.
For example, to search for Repertory +of practice:
You can also include the "+" sign in phrase searches.
Does the UN Search Engine Use Stemming?
To provide the most accurate results, the UN Search engine does not use "stemming" or support "wildcard" searches. Rather, it searches for exactly the words that you enter into the search box.
For example, searching for "specialized agenc" or "specialized agenc*" will not yield "specialized agency" or "specialized agencies.". If in doubt, try both forms, for example: "specialized agency" and "specialized agencies."
Refining Your Search
Since the UN Search engine only returns web pages that contain all of the words in your query, refining or narrowing your search is as simple as adding more words to the search terms you have already entered. The refined query returns a specific subset of the pages that were returned by your original broad query.
Excluding Words
You can exclude a word from your search by putting a minus sign ("-") immediately in front of the term you want to exclude. Make sure you include a space before the minus sign.
For example, the search:
will return pages about climate that do not contain the word "investment."
Phrase Searches
You can search for phrases by adding quotation marks. Words enclosed in double quotes ("like this") appear together in all returned documents. Phrase searches using quotation marks are useful when searching for famous sayings or specific names.
Certain characters serve as phrase connectors. Phrase connectors work like quotes because they join your search words in the same way double quotes join your search words. For example, the use of a hyphen in the search:
is treated as a phrase search even though the search words are not enclosed in double quotes. The UN search engine recognizes hyphens, slashes, periods, equal signs, and apostrophes as phrase connectors.
Restricted Searches
You may also narrow searches by restricting queries in certain ways.
| Restrict Type | Query Syntax | Example |
|---|---|---|
| to a given location on your site | allinurl; allintitle; inurl; intitle | allinurl:un aids see Advanced Operators for details |
| to specific domains | site: | site:unece.org see Advanced Operators for details |
| to specific file types like excel spreadsheets, pdf docs, etc. | filetype: | filetype:pdf |
Directory Restricting
To restrict the directories searched, enter a URL that drills down through
the directory structure to the directories or files to be searched. For
example, the query [un.org/News/] restricts the search to
everything at the manual level. If the trailing slash is not included, as in [un.org/News], then all subdirectories are also
searched.
Advanced Operators
The UN search engine supports several advanced operators, which are query words with special functions. A list of the advanced operators with explanation are provided below.
cache:
The search engine keeps the
text of the many documents it crawls available in a backed-up format known
as "cache." A cached version of a web page can be retrieved if the original
page is unavailable (for example, the page's server is down). The cached
page appears exactly as it looked when the crawler last crawled it and
includes a message (at the top of the page) to indicate that it's a cached
version of the page.
The query [cache:] shows the cached version of the web page. For
instance, [cache:www.un.org] shows the cached page of UN's
homepage.
Note: There can be no space between cache: and the web
page URL in the query.
If you include other words in the query, those words will be highlighted
within the cached document. For instance, [cache:www.un.org press
releases] shows the cached content with the words "press" and
"releases" highlighted.
info:
The query [info:] returns all information
available for that particular URL. For instance, [info:www.un.org] shows information about the UN homepage.
Note there can be no space between the info: and the web page URL.
site:
If you include [site:] in your query, the
results are restricted to those websites in the given domain. For instance, [help site:www.un.org] finds pages about help within www.un.org. [help site:org] finds pages about help within .org URLs.
Note: There can be no space between the "site:" and the
domain.
link:
The query [link:] enables you to restrict your
search to all pages that have links to the query page. To do this, use the [link:www.un.org/peace/] syntax in the search box. No other query
terms can be specified when using this special query term.
For example, to find all Web pages in the UN Web site that have links to the main page of the UN Peace and Security site www.un.org/peace, enter:
allintitle:
If you start a query with [allintitle:],
the results are restricted to documents with all of the query words in the
document's HTML title. For example, [allintitle: dialogue among civilizations] only returns documents that have "dialogue", "among" and "civilizations" in the HTML
title.
intitle:
If you include [intitle:] in your query, the
search is restricted to results with documents containing that word in the
HTML title. For example, [intitle:un indigenous] returns documents
that mention the word "un" in their HTML title, and mention the word
"indigenous" anywhere in the document either in the title or anywhere else in
the document.
Note: There can be no space between the "intitle:" and the following word.
Putting [intitle:] in front of every word in your query is
equivalent to putting [allintitle:] at the front of your query. For
example, [intitle:un intitle:indigenous] is the same as [allintitle: un indigenous].
allinurl:
If you start a query with [allinurl:], the
search is restricted to results with all of the query words in the URL. For
example, [allinurl: un indigenous] returns only documents that have
both "un" and "indigenous" in the URL.
Note: [allinurl:] works on words, not URL components. In
particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, [allinurl: Depts/dhl] restricts the results to page with the words "Depts" and "dhl" in the URL, but
doesn't require that they be separated by a slash within that URL, that they
be adjacent, or that they be in that particular word order. There is
currently no way to enforce these constraints.
inurl:
If you include [inurl:] in your query, the
results are restricted to documents containing that word in the URL. For
example, [inurl:un search] returns documents that mention the
word "un" in their URL and mention the word "search" anywhere in the
document either in the URL or anywhere else in the document.
Note: There can be no space between the "inurl:" and the following word.
Note: [inurl:] works on words, not URL components. In
particular, it ignores punctuation. Thus, in the query [un
inurl:Dets/dhl], the inurl: operator affects only the word
"Depts," which is the single word following the inurl: operator, and
does not affect the word "dhl." The query [un inurl:Depts
inurl:dhl] can be used to require both "Depts" and "dhl" to be in the
URL.
Putting [inurl:] in front of every word in your query is
equivalent to putting [allinurl:] at the front of your query. For
example, [inurl:un inurl:search] is the same as [allinurl:
un search].