Using the tips on this page, you can expand the focus of your query to give you more complete results.

By default, the search engine returns results that include any of multiple search terms and it ranks the results in descending order by displaying those containing the greatest number of those terms first and those with the least number of the terms last. Keep in mind that the order of the terms in your search will affect the order of the result list.

To search for a phrase or a person’s name, place the phrase or name in quotation marks, for example:
“breach of contract” or “John Smith.”

To search for a case by docket or index number, use quotation marks and include the numbers exactly as they appear on the court file, such as "2004-00297" or "35896/99."

Add the AND operator to find all instances of two or more words. For example:
Abbott AND Costello (This query finds only pages that mention both Abbott and Costello).

Add the OR operator to find all instances of either one word or another. For example:
Abbott OR Costello (This query finds all pages that mention Abbott or Costello or both).

To look for words with the same prefix, type the prefix followed by an asterisk. For example:
Type key* to find key, keying, keyhole, keyboard, and so on.

To search for all forms of a word, type the word followed by two asterisks. For example:
Type sink** to find sink, sinking, sank, and sunk.

To search for words in proximity to one another, use the operator NEAR instead of AND. For example:
Both the queries system AND manager and system NEAR manager, look for the words system and manager on the same page. But using the operator NEAR, the returned pages are ranked in order of proximity. The closer together the words are, the higher the rank of that page.

Refine your queries with the AND NOT operator to exclude certain text from your search. For example, if you want to find all instances of surfing but not the Net, write the following query:
surfing AND NOT “the Net”.