HIV and AIDS in the UK

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We are happy to offer you the ability to search our site for the topic, keyword or phrase you are looking for. If you are new to this search engine then you may want to read the hints and tips on using this search feature.

If you have any comments/suggestions about the search engine (or anything else relating to this site), then please email the webmaster.

There are four stages to using this search facility:

  1. Enter keyword(s) or text that you want to search the site for

    See the hints and tips for information on how to use the special modifiers -, +, AND, OR, NOT, *, "

  2. Select how you want the search to be performed

    OR    AND

    OR search is best used when looking for a topic that can be described by two or more words, such as children or kids. It will return the results with the word that has the highest occurance first.

    AND search will produce pages that have both words on that page. It is best used for common phrases. Be wary of the words AIDS or HIV as these occur on almost every page, try using 'positive' or 'infection' instead.

    Speech marks can be used, such as "your word" and will only produce pages where that phrase or sentence appears. This is best best used for detailed searchs, topics and subjects that are not so common such as "HIV and AIDS cases in children under 13"

    This is over-ridden by the use of the special modifiers -, +, AND, and NOT, see, see below

  3. Select the search case

    Insensitive    Sensitive

    Insensitive will match 'aids' to 'Aids' and 'AIDS'.
    Sensitive will only match 'Aids' to 'Aids'.

  4. Click on the search button

    This will give you a list of all matches, with a probability of it being a correct link.
    Click on one of the matches to go to that page.

Hints on using the search engine
  • It is important that you choose what you search for carefully. If, for instance, you choose to search for "AIDS and HIV", then you are likely to get a lot of pages listed. The site is about AIDS, HIV and related topics so those words are likely to be on every page. It would be better to refine your words and be more specific in what you are looking for, eg., an AND search for "hiv statistics in children" would only show you the pages with 'hiv' (or HIV, Hiv, etc), 'statistics' and 'children' contain within the text.

  • Special modifers help you to perform more advanced searching. These modifiers work as shown in the examples below. Note that the modifiers may alter the AND/OR choice you might make.

    +AIDS +education
    meaning: require AIDS, require education
    Finds "AIDS Education", "AIDS education", and "education for people studying AIDS".
    Does not find the lowercase "aids education" (if case is sensitive), nor the abbreviated "AIDS edu".

    -AIDS +picture
    meaning: forbid AIDS, require picture
    Finds "HIV picture", "picture the scene", and lowercase "aids picture".
    Does not find "AIDS definition" nor "AIDS picture".

    or AIDS and infection
    meaning: prefer AIDS, require infection
    Finds "HIV infection", "AIDS infection", and "AIDS Infection".
    Documents with both terms appear higher in the list.

    "HIV pictures"
    meaning: require the phrase "HIV pictures"
    Finds "HIV pictures".
    Does not find "HIV Pictures" nor "pictures of HIV".

    and aids and infect*
    meaning: require aids, require words starting with "infect"
    Finds "AIDS infects" (if case insensitive), "aids infecting", "Aids infected". (if case insensitive)
    The asterisk is a wildcard representing any four or fewer characters.

    not planet and Venus and pictures or images
    meaning: require Venus, require pictures, forbid planet, prefer images
    First lists "pictures and images of Venus", then "Venus pictures".
    Does not list lowercase "venus picture" (if case sensitive), nor forbidden "picture of planet Venus".

    Where is the *frog*?
    meaning: ignores common words like where, is, and the - requires words containing "frog"
    Finds "frog", "frogleg", and "bullfrog".
    To suppress the ignore feature, use quotes, as in "Where is the *frog*?".

  • The asterisk is a powerful search tool, but has some limitations. It cannot span words - that is, the query "powerfu*earch" would not match the first sentence of this paragraph - and it can represent at most four letters or numbers. To avoid overly broad searches, the asterisk can only be used in words or phrases which have at least three alpha-numeric characters. A search for "th*" would be ignored.

  • As this site is predominantly about AIDS and HIV then you are unlikely to get results when you search for Adult entertainment related topics

 

Last updated September 2, 2004

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