New behavior

Explanation

Exact phrases

Put quotation marks around adjacent words for them to be treated as an exact, unified phrase.

For example, "Exchange Commission" will return only documents with that exact phrase.

Stemming

Grammatical variants of words are returned by default. For example, entering prohibited will also return results for prohibit, prohibiting, and prohibits.

You may turn off stemming—that is, specify you want an exact match—simply by using quotation marks.

Relevance

If your query includes text, the most relevant results (not the newest) will

initially appear at the top of your results.

You may opt out of relevance boosting by switching to another sort order, such as newest first.

Boolean and Advanced Operators

Use of these operators is optional. They may be used, but are not necessary for strong results.

See table below.

Description

Symbol

Example

Explanation

Conjunctive operator – broadens search

OR

merger or acquisition or joint venture

Use OR between search terms to expand your search by locating documents containing either term.  In the example to the left, the search will generate results containing any or all of the terms.

Conjunctive operator – narrows search

AND

commissioner and rulemaking

Use AND between search terms to limit your search by locating documents in which both terms appear.  In the example, the search will generate results containing both terms in the same document.

Excluding operator

NOT

violations not fraud

Use NOT between search terms to limit your search by locating documents in which the first search term appears in the document but the second search term does not. In the example, results will include only documents in which violations appears but fraud does not. 

Wildcard

*

Generally speaking, the wildcard operator is

no longer necessary, and will slow down your search. Stemming (see above) will typically accomplish the same goal. Use the OR operator if you’re not sure a variant will get picked up, e.g., revoke or revocation.

Proximity operator

NEAR

ozone near nitrogen

Use NEAR or W/ between search terms to return results where the first term appears within 50 words of the second term. This example will find results containing ozone within 50 words of nitrogen.

W/

website w/ copyright infringement

W/#

Social media w/3 privacy

You may add a number after the slash to specify the maximum number of words between the search terms. In the example, results will only be returned where social media and privacy have no more than 3 words between them.

Proximity operator, one-directional

PRE/#

registration pre/10 securities

Use PRE/ or P/ plus a number to search for documents in which the first term appears before the second term, within a specified number of words. For example, typing PRE/10 will search for documents in which the first term appears within 10 words before the second term. 

P/#

senior p/3 notes

Quotation marks

"

"hydraulic fracturing"

Quotation marks always specify an exact match. In the example, the search engine will only return results in which the exact phrase hydraulic fracturing is present.

"securitization"

Quotation marks allow you to opt out of stemming (which treats grammatical variants of a word as a match). In the example, the quotation marks specify that you don't want matches for related words like security, securities, and securitize.

"food and drug administration"

The exact match rule also applies to words like and and or that are ordinarily interpreted as Boolean operators. In the example, and is treated as actual text, and the whole phrase is searched for.

Parentheses

( )

(Common stock pre/20 (repurchase or buyback)) and open market w/10 (negotiated transactions or exchange offer)

Use parentheses to order Boolean operators in a single search; commands inside parentheses are executed first. Parentheses are recommended when using more than two different operators.

(investment bank)

Like quotation marks, parentheses can be used to specify that a string of words be treated as a unified phrase. However, using parentheses allows individuals words in the phrase to be stemmed. In the example, documents including the phrases investment bank, investment banking, and investment banker will all be returned.

Other Guidelines

Upper / Lower Case

Stock or STOCK or Stock

The search engine is not case-sensitive. Use lower or upper case as you wish.

Punctuation

Google, Inc. or Google Inc

Common punctuation marks, such as commas and periods, are ignored.

Special Characters

! @ # ^

Some non-alphanumeric characters or symbols are not supported, and you will get an error message if you use them.