The search engine at www.whpd.org is a powerful tool which indexes every single word on the website. (including image-alternate text, page URL's, etc.) There are currently over 15,000 words indexed and growing almost daily!

This HELP page provides tips for using the search engine to narrow your search and receive the ideal results.

Tip #1: Use quotation marks
Use quotation marks to find words which must appear adjacent to each other, for example, "our pledge to you".

With the quotation marks, the search will return results containing the entire phrase, just as you entered it. Otherwise, the search results will include the word our, pledge, to, and the word you, but not necessarily in that order. The words may appear anywhere, and in any order, within the document.

Note: if you are using the Advanced Search Form with radio buttons for "any," "all," and "phrase," then quotes can only be used when the "any" radio button is selected. Quotes are ignored if the "all" or "phrase" radio buttons are selected.

Tip #2: Use appropriate capitalization
Capitalize proper nouns, and remember that lower-case words will match any case. For example, typing search will return all documents containing the words search, Search, and SEARCH. Typing Search, however, will instruct the search engine to look only for the capitalized word.

Tip #3: Use field searches
Field searches allow you to create specific searches for words that appear in a specific part of a document. A field search can be performed on body text (body:), title text (title:), alt text (alt:), or the page URL (url:). The field name should be in lower-case and immediately followed by a colon. There should be no spaces between the colon and the search term.

For example, if you wanted to search for the word police, but just in the page titles, you would enter the following into the search box:

title:police

To search for Winthrop Harbor Police Department, but only in the alt text on the website (alt text is what displays as pictures are loading) you would enter the following into the search box:

alt:"winthrop harbor police department"

Note: The field searches can only be followed by a word or phrase. Phrases must be contained within quotation marks.

Note: if you are using the Advanced Search Form with a list box for the field name, then field names can only be entered before a word or phrase when the "any" option is selected. Specific field names are ignored if any other Advanced Search Form field is selected in the list box.