• Try to make your searches specific. If you're looking for a waterblommetjie potjie recipe, type in waterblommetjie potjie recipe, not just waterblommetjie. The more specific you are, the more relevant the results will be.
• If you want to find pages that must contain a specific word, use the + symbol. +cats dogs horses will return pages that must contain the word "cats", and that may contain the words "dogs" and "horses".
• Sometimes you may want to make sure that certain words do not appear in your results. For example, you may want to search for articles on cats or dogs that do not refer to horses. In this case, use the - symbol to exclude the word "horses", like this cats dogs -horses.
• When you want to search for an exact phrase, use quotation marks. It's a good idea to do this if you're searching for a name, like "Joel Stranksy". Without the quotes you could get results referring to other Joels, or even other Stranskys!
• If you would like help conducting these sorts of more advanced queries, use the Advanced Search  page. You can find some help for this page here .

Hover your mouse over the various sections of the image below to get a brief description of each one. Click on a section to view a more detailed description of it.

• Enter your search query here

  Select the area you would like to search by clicking on a tab at the top of the box, and then type your query into the box. You can also click to go to the  Advanced Search or to the Preferences .

• Refine your search

  Click on one of the keywords to make your query more specific. These keywords are taken from the results of your query and can help you to narrow your search down to find the pages you want.

  When searching some areas you can click on a category to further narrow your search. For example, when searching for music you will have the opportunity to search for music by genre, or for a particular artist.

• Recent searches

  Up to your last 5 searches are shown in the recent searches list. You can clear this list by clicking the Clear All button or individual items by clicking on the bin button next to each entry.

• Search results

  The results of your search are displayed in this area. Here you will see a brief description of the page. Click on the heading or the link underneath the description to go to the page.

• Results pages

  Choose a page number to view that page of the search results, or use the arrows to page forwards or backwards through your results.

• If you cannot find a specific site on Search , you can add it by clicking on the "Submit your site" link (this link is also at the bottom of all pages within the Search site).

The advanced search page helps you construct a complex query. There are four fields you can use to compose your query:

• All of these words

  Enter words in this box which must appear somewhere in the pages that get returned by the search. The words can appear in any order, and not necessarily together, but they must be somewhere in the page.

• The exact phrase

  If you're searching for someone's name, or perhaps for a quotation, enter it into this box. This will make sure that only pages which contain the words you're after (in that exact order) are found.

• Any of these words

  When you would like to search for any, some, or all of a group of words, use this box. You may decide to use this if you're searching more generally. If you are looking for something that could be spelt differently in different sites, like humour and humor for instance, put both spellings here. Results will only be returned if they contain at least one of the words in the box.

• None of these words

  Perhaps you'd like to ensure that your search results do not contain certain words. An example could be that you are searching for articles about pool (the game played on tables) and you don't want any references to swimming. In this case you should put the word swimming in this box.

You can also restrict which sites are searched in one of two ways:

• Only within a specific top-level domain

  What is a top-level domain? It's the part of a website's address just after the last full-stop. It's the .com, or the .za, and so on. If you know, for example, that you're only interested in results from .com websites, you can specify that you are only interested in results from .com.

• Only within a specific site

  Perhaps you're only interested in results from a particular website? If that's the case you can specify the website in the Only search in this site box.

It is also possible to override (temporarily) your search preferences. You can change the number of search results per page using the drop-down list near the top of the Advanced Search page, or you can switch the Safe Search on or off. Neither of these settings will affect any searches apart from your current one.

Your search preferences are settings which get applied to all of your searches (unless you temporarily override them using Advanced Search).

• Number of results

  Choose the maximum number of results you would like to be displayed per page. Note that the default setting of 10 will provide the fastest results.

• Results window

  Check the box if you would like each search to open up in a new window.

• Safe Search filter

  Select whether you would like the Safe Search filter to be enabled. With Safe Search on, we will attempt to exclude pages which contain adult content.

Safe Search attempts to exclude adult-oriented content from your search results. It cannot be guaranteed that all adult content will be filtered out, though. If you feel that certain sites are included in results with the Safe Search enabled when they shouldn't be, please let us know by using Feedback .