Search Help
How to Navigate Search
Enter a keyword or phrase in the Search box, and click the "Search" button.
Use the dropdown menus to change the sort order or the number of results per page.
Use the options on the left to Narrow Results by Source (Publications, Federal Vacancies, Bid Protest Docket, Other Sources), Date, Topic, or Agency.
Narrow further with context sensitive subcategories.
Provide Feedback
Your feedback is valuable. Please use the "Provide Feedback" link above the Search box to submit feedback to help us improve this search.
FAQs
Content Searched
Features
Basic Search
Have some keywords or a topic area?
Advanced Search
Some words, all words or this exact phrase
Stemming
Boolean Operators
Proximity Search
Grouping
Field Grouping
Searching for Special Characters
Fuzzy Searches
Content Searched
This search returns results based on matches in information about products, including title, summary, and topics, as well as in the full text of PDF files and web pages. Handwritten and image-based documents are not fully searchable.
Features
Sort results Alphabetically, by Date, or by Relevance.
Show 10, 25 or 50 results per page.
Narrow your results by selecting Source (Publications, Federal Rules, Bid Protest Docket, Featured Content, Other Sources), Date, Topic, or Agency.
Further narrow by context-sensitive subcategories. For example, in Publications, narrow by Testimonies, various types of Reports, Decisions and other publication types. In Dates, narrow first to the decade, then to a particular year.
Remove any narrowing category by clicking the "x" next to it.
Basic Search
Suggested terms appear below the search box as you type. You can pick one of them or keep typing.
Interprets your original query to improve search results.
Have some keywords or a topic area?
Type the terms in the box, and click "Search."
Use quotes for a phrase, for example, "aviation security"
Use advanced search to automatically build more complex queries.
Enter it in the Search box. Include leading and following letters if you know them.
Use quotes for a phrase, for example, "aviation security".
Use advanced search to automatically build more complex queries.
GAO-07-370T, gao-06-729g, nsiad-00-211, B-208730, B-299486.3
Run your search first, then...
Pick a sort option from the dropdown. Example: "Sort by: Date new->old".
Run your search first, then...
Choose results per page: 10, 25 or 50.
Narrow Results by > Source > Other Sources.
Advanced Search
Add criteria with the "Add line" link near the bottom of the search.
Remove criteria with the "X" beside each row.
The maximum number of rows is 10.
Choose "Must INCLUDE" to require the search terms that have been entered in the row.
Choose "Must NOT Include" to ensure the words in the row do not appear in the search results.
Choose "May include" to increase the likelihood that a term is returned without requiring it.
Some words, all words or this exact phrase
Choose "All of these words" to require that all the words in the row are returned in the search results (without requiring that they be in order or next to each other).
Choose "Any of these words" to require that at least one of the words in the row appear.
Choose "This exact phrase" to require that all of the words appear next to each other in the order given. You do not need to put the phrase in quotes.
Each search line can be limited to a particular field (title, summary, full text, or report number) with the "in this field" dropdown menu.
Select a date range in the "Narrow by date" dropdown menus to filter by date. This limits the search by the date of the original document, which could be earlier than the date that the document was published to the website.
Stemming
The search automatically uses "stemming," a process that matches a given search term with related words in order to better identify relevant search results. For instance, a search for "mining" will also match "miner" and "mines."
Boolean Operators
The BASIC search, by default, looks for items that match every term you include in the search box.
Boolean operators allow you to specify terms to be combined through logic operators. The search supports AND, "+", OR, NOT and "-"as Boolean operators (Note: Boolean operators must be ALL CAPS).
The OR operator links two terms and finds a result if either of the terms exist.
To search for results containing either "london, CT" or just "london" use the query:
"london, CT" OR london
The AND operator finds results where both terms exist anywhere in the text of a single item. The symbol && can be used in place of the word AND. To search for items that contain "london, KY" and "airspace," use the query:
"London, KY" AND airspace
or
"London, KY" && airspace
The "+" or "required" operator requires that the term after the "+" symbol exist somewhere in the result.
To search for results that must contain "london" and may contain "travel" use the query:
+london travel
The NOT operator excludes results that contain the term or phrase after NOT.
To search for results that contain "London, CT" but not "London, KY" use the query:
"London, CT" NOT "London, KY"
Note: The NOT operator cannot be used with just one term or phrase. For example, the following query will return no results:
NOT "London, CT"
The "-" or "prohibit" operator excludes results that contain the term or phrase after the "-" symbol.
To search for results that contain "London, CT" but not "London, KY," use the query:
"London, CT" - "London, KY"
Note: The - operator cannot be used with just one term or phrase. For example, the following query will return no results:
- "London, CT"
Proximity Searches
The tilde symbol (~) finds words that are within a specific distance of each other.
Use the tilde symbol (~) at the end of the last word. Use quotation marks to group the words you want to find near each other.
To search for "paris" and "london" within 10 words of each other, use the query:
"paris london"~10
Grouping
Use up to 10 Search Criteria
Use parentheses to group clauses to form subqueries. This can be very useful if you need to control the Boolean logic for a query.
To search for either "atlanta" or "georgia" and "state," use the query:
(atlanta OR georgia) AND state
This means "state" must exist and either "atlanta" or "georgia" may exist in the results.
Field Grouping
Use up to 10 Search Criteria
Use parentheses to group multiple clauses in a single field.
To search for a title that contains both the word "preparer" and the phrase "tax return," use the query:
title:(+preparer +"tax return")
You may search within title, description, body or url of the page and you can combine multiple fields in one query.
To search for a title that contains both the word "preparer" and the phrase "tax return" and contains "errors" in the description, use the query:
title:(+preparer +"tax return") description:errors
Searching For Special Characters
You can search for special characters that may appear in GAO content, even though the search uses special characters to tell it how to operate.
These are the special characters:
+ - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \
If you want to find any of these characters use the \ before the character. For example to search for "(1+1):2" use the query:
\(1\+1\)\:2
Fuzzy Searches
Use fuzzy searches to find words spelled similarly to the query you have entered.
Use the tilde symbol ("~") at the end of a single word.
For example, if you aren't sure how to spell the name "Nassawadox" use the fuzzy search on your best guess of the spelling:
Nasawadoc~
If you want to find any of these characters use the \ before the character. For example to search for "(1+1):2" use the query:
You can also supply an additional (optional) parameter to specify the required similarity. The value is between 0 and 1, with a value closer to 1 only terms with a higher similarity will be matched. For example:
Nasawadoc~0.6
The default that is used if the parameter is not given is 0.5.