It only displays the pages that include all the search terms. It is not necessary to include "and" between the terms. The search engine also ignores other common words and characters such as articles, prepositions or elements like "http" and ".com", because they do not aid in limiting the search and may even slow it down. However, should you wish to use a common word or character, or search for complete sentences, use the plus symbol ("+") between the terms making sure it is separated by spaces.

The gencat search engine does not distinguish accents, dieresis or the letter ñ. Neither does it differentiate between upper and lower case. You will get the same results searching for "housing" or "HoUsiNg".

For best results, the gencat search engine locates the exact terms entered in the query and does not make searches for incomplete words

When the result found is not a page in html format, the title of the page is preceded by an icon indicating the type of document (Adobe Acrobat PDF, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Power Point...).

The first line of the result, displayed in red, is the title of the web page found. Sometimes, when the page has no title, an URL will be displayed.

This text is one or more fragments of the page with the search terms highlighted. This enables viewing the context where the search terms appear before clicking on the result.

Following the reference text, in blue, is the URL of the page web found. This is followed by a number indicating the volume of the text on the page. Finally, there is the date creation (index?).

The gencat search engine can show a version of the page web found as it was at the time it was indexed. This is especially useful if the page has changed location, been modified or expired.

The gencat search engine can show a version of the page web found as it was at the time it was indexed. This is especially useful if the page has changed location, been modified or expired.

Whenever the search engine finds more than one result on the same web site, it first displays the most relevant with the remainder being displayed below.

If the list of results is too extensive, add more search terms. As the gencat search engine only finds web pages that contain all the words entered in the search box, when more words are added the number of possible results is reduced.

It is possible to exclude a word from the search by using a minus sign ("-") immediately before the term to be omitted. Make sure you leave a blank space before the minus sign

It is also possible to search for complete sentences or phrases by adding quotes. For example, you can enter the phrase "The Catalan people consider the highest values of their collective life to be freedom, Justice and equality" between quotes to get a result for all the documents that contain these words in exactly this order. Remember that common words ("com", "a", "of", "the", etc.) are omitted from the search unless marked with a plus sign ("+") to be included. This option is useful when searching for exact quotations, full names, etc. The search engine recognises some characters such as dashes, slashes, full stops, the equals sign ("=") and apostrophes, as conjunctions for phrases.

The search can be restricted to a certain web site by using "site:exempledomain.com" after the terms entered in the search box.

If you have not found what you were searching for with a simple search, the gencat search engine enables restricting the search under different criteria.

Click on "Advanced search" to find results that:

• Contain all the words entered
• Contain the exact phrase
• Contain at least one of the words
• Do not contain certain words

Or to select certain attributes:

• The language of the results
• The place where the words are to appear (all the page, title or the url)
• The format of the documents (any, .html, .pdf, .doc, .xls, .ppt)
• The date of the last update (any time, last 3 months, last 6 months, last year)
• The order of the records (by relevance or date)
• The field (Ministries of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia, Services, Organisations or Official Gazette - Catalan Government Gazette).
• The site or domain where you want to search (you can type www.icaen.net if you want to search particularly at the Catalan Institute for Energy site).