Transport Canada
Search is simple: type what you are looking for in the search box, hit Enter or click on the "Search" button, and the engine will search the Transport Canada Web site for pages that are a good match.
Most of the time you'll find exactly what you are looking for. But the tips below can help you make the most of your searches. We've put square brackets [ ] around words so you'll know they are sample queries. For example, [ black and white ] is one query, while [ black ] and [ white ] are two. You don't need to use brackets in your searches.
@#$%^&*()=+[]\
While the basic search advice given above covers most common uses of the search engine, sometimes you need a little bit more power. Remember, we use square brackets [ ] around queries, so [ civil aviation ] is an example of a query; [ civil ] or [ aviation ] are two examples of queries. You don't need to use brackets in your searches.
When you put double quotes around a set of words, you are telling the engine to find the exact words in that exact order without any change. Please note that when you use double quotes you might miss good results. For example, a search for [ "Alexander Bell" ] (with quotes) will miss the pages that refer to Alexander G. Bell.
Attaching a minus sign before a word tells the search engine that you do not want results that contain this word. Place the minus sign right before the word, and place a space right before the minus sign. For example, in the query [ anti-virus software ], the minus sign is used as a hyphen and will not trigger an exclusion. The query [ anti-virus -software ], however, will search for the words 'anti-virus' but will not produce results related to software. You can exclude as many words as you want by placing a space and minus sign in front of each.
If you include * within a query, it tells the engine to try to treat the asterisk as a placeholder for any unknown term(s) and then find the best matches. For example, the search [ Transport * ] will give you results about many of Transport Canada's resources.
The search engine automatically looks for synonyms. For example, if you search for [web site] with a space, it will find pages that mention website (one word) as well. By attaching a plus sign (+) just before a word (don't add a space after the +), you are telling the engine to match that word exactly as you typed it [+web site]. Putting double quotes around a single word will do the same thing.
The search engine will always try to use all the words in a search. If you want it to allow either one of several words, you can type the word OR (in ALL CAPS) or the symbol | between them. (The AND operator, is the default, so is not needed.)
Words that are commonly used, like 'the', 'a', and 'for', are usually ignored (these are called stop words). But there are even exceptions to this exception. The search [ the who ] likely refers to the band; the query [ who ] probably refers to the World Health Organization – the engine will not ignore the word 'the' in the first query.
A keyword might not appear on a results page if there is enough other evidence that the page is relevant. For example, the query [ overhead view of ships in the harbour ] will give you nice overhead pictures from pages that do not include the word 'overhead'.
The search engine will not ignore punctuation that is part of popular terms like [ C++ ] or [ C# ], which are both names of programming languages.
The dollar sign ($) triggers price results. [ abc 400 ] and [ abc $400 ] will give different results.
The hyphen - is sometimes used as a signal that the two words around it are very strongly connected. (Unless there is a space before the - and no space after it, which is the exclusion formula.)
