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Friday, 26 December 2025

Searching difficult sites

There are a few websites I use regularly which have poor search functions; or hardly any search function at all. Sometimes the search on those sites may be specific to a single section of the website architecture, or the search box may appear on only a few pages, 

However, there are a couple of ways to search those sites which have - often unintentionally - made it harder for us to find their stuff. 

Firstly, if I am wanting to search the page I am on, then I simply Crtl & F to bring up the Find window, and enter my search term in that. A quick enter should take me to the first instance of my entered search term on the page. Repeated enters will tab me through each of the next occurrences.

Secondly, there are a couple of sites where I need to find particular documents or sub-pages. Here I will entering a search string - like the two examples following - into my favourite search bar (DuckDuckGo at the moment): 

site:www.cate.co.nz Code of Ethics 

site:www.cate.co.nz "Code of Ethics"

We put "site:" followed by the website itself to identify the web domain (or a longer URL) we want to be searched, and then the search term we are seeking at that address. We can use quotes marks in the search string if we are looking for an exactly search term (i.e. exactly what is inside the double quote marks, including spaces). 

And between those two methods, I usually find that which I need.


Sam

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