Welcome to the FDIC Web site search facility. Please select a help topic from the list below:

1. The Basic Search
2. Automatic "AND" Searches
3. Phrase Searches
4. "OR" Searches
5. Does Capitalization Matter?
6. Refining Your Search
7. Excluding Words
8. Automatic Exclusion of Common Words
9. See Your Search Terms in the Results
10. Spelling
11. Stemming (Word Variations)

Doing a search is easy. Simply type one or more search terms (the words or phrase that best describe the information you want to find) into the search box and hit the Enter key or click the Search button.

This produces a results page: a list of Web pages related to your search terms, with the most relevant page appearing first, then the next, and so on.

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To broaden or restrict the search, include fewer or more terms.

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You can search for phrases by adding quotation marks. Words enclosed in double quotes ("like this") appear together in all returned documents. Phrase searches using quotation marks are useful when searching for specific titles or names.

Certain characters serve as phrase connectors. Phrase connectors work like quotes because they join your search words in the same way double quotes join your search words. For example, the search:

is treated as a phrase search even though the search words are not enclosed in double quotes. The search will recognize hyphens, slashes, periods, equal signs, and apostrophes as phrase connectors.

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Since the search only returns pages that contain all of the words in your query, refining or narrowing your search is as simple as adding more words to the search terms you have already entered. The refined search returns a subset of the pages that were returned by your original, broader query.

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You can exclude a word from your search by putting a minus sign ("-") immediately in front of the term you want to exclude. Make sure you include a space before the minus sign.

For example, the search:

will return pages about regions that do not contain the word "atlanta."

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Common words such as "where" and "how", as well as certain single digits and single letters are automatically ignored, because they tend to slow down your search without improving the results.

If a common word is essential to getting the results you want, you can include it by putting a "+" sign in front of it or enclosing your phrase in quotation marks. Make sure that you include a space before the "+" sign.

For example, to search for Basel II:

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Most search results list one or more excerpts from the Web page to display how your search terms are used in context on that page. In the excerpt, your search terms are displayed in bold text.

You may also click the "Cached" or "Text Version" link that appears at the end of each citation to view the entire document with all your search terms highlighted.

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Did you mean: security

Note: Currently, the spell checker supports only US English.

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To provide the most accurate results, "stemming" or wildcard searches are not supported. The system only will search for exactly what you type in the search box.

For example, searching for "region" or "region*" will not find pages containing "regional" or "regions." Search for multiple forms of a word by specifying the forms you want to find separated by OR; for example, "regional OR regions".

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