How to search.

How to sort your results.

You can sort your results by relevance or by date, by clicking on those words at the top right of the results page. Relevance will sort your results in order of which pages it seems likeliest you were looking for. Date will sort your results by date of publication, starting with the most recent and working backwards.

You can also sort your results using the blue tabs at the top of the results page.

If you're searching on the main CBC.ca site, there are three tabs at the top of the page. To get results from all of CBC.ca including all local sites, click Results From All of CBC. For a news story, click Results From News. For sports, click Results From Sports.

On some CBC.ca subsites, for example Montreal or the North, there are four tabs at the top of the results page. If you are on the CBC North site, and are looking for something specific to the North, click the tab labelled Results From CBC North. For results from all of CBC.ca including all local sites, click Results From All of CBC. For news, click Results From News. For sports, click Results From Sports.

For the best results:

Try to spell correctly.

Your results will be better if your spelling is correct, but the search engine will try to correct spelling for you. For example, if you type Afganistan the search engine will ask if you mean Afghanistan; if you type Rothsay New Brunswick, it will ask if you mean Rothesay New Brunswick.

The search engine supports Canadian spellings. So yes, you can do searches containing words such as labour, centre, cheque and defence.

Capitalization is irrelevant.

Searches are not case sensitive. It doesn't matter if you type mansbridge or Mansbridge.

You don't need to enter AND.

The search engine returns only results that include all your search terms. That means you don't need to type AND between words. So you don't need to type Bush AND Iraq AND Saddam Hussein, just Bush Iraq Saddam Hussein.

Use OR to find pages containing one of two or more words.

For example, you could type plutonium OR uranium to get pages that contain either or both words.

To make this work, you must capitalize the OR.

Exclude words by using the - sign.

You can exclude a word from your search by typing - immediately before the word. For example, if you wanted pages about the Royal Canadian Air Force but not the TV program the Royal Canadian Air Farce, you could type RCAF -farce.

Use quotation marks to find a complete phrase.

You can search for a complete phrase by enclosing it in quotation marks. For example, the phrase "just watch me" or "UN security council" would return pages that include the entire phrase, not just those individual words.

Very common words will be ignored.

The search engine ignores words such as where, to, how, with and be, because those words appear on lots of pages, so searching for them will slow down your results. If those words are important, you can force the search engine to look for them by putting a + sign in front of the word, or by enclosing the entire phrase in quotation marks. So, to search for the Just For Laughs comedy festival, you would type "Just for laughs"or just +for laughs.

Don't use stemming ("wildcard" searches).

The search engine searches for exactly the word or words you type. So if you type airlin or airlin*, you will not get results for either airline or airlines. If you want results for both, just type both words into the box.

How to search for a CBC radio or TV program page, or a host's biography.

Type the name of the program or host, and click Search. Don't worry if you aren't sure about the spelling: the search engine will try to help you. For example, if you type Sheila Rogers, the search engine will give you the page for Shelagh Rogers. If you type Wendy Mesly, it will ask if you mean Wendy Mesley.