Finding information anywhere on our Web site is as easy as entering a few words or phrases in the search box located in the top, right-hand corner of every page. The search page will return the most relevant results based on your query.

Choosing Words & Phrases

Using words or phrases that are likely to be found only in the documents you're looking for will help you get the most relevant results. For example, if you are looking for information on child safety around the house, search for child house safety instead of keeping my children safe in my house.

Place double quotation marks around phrases or words that must appear together. To find information on electric safety, search for "electric safety" instead of electric safety, which may also return results for gas safety and electric wiring tips for your home.

Adding more words and phrases may generate more relevant results, because Orange and Rockland's Search assigns higher relevance to documents with more of your search terms. For example, to find information about O&R's tree trimming program, search for "tree trimming" program instead of "tree trimming". Relevant pages that don't contain all the search terms will still be returned.

Capitalization

If a search term is in all lowercase letters, it will match results in any case. However, if the term uses any capitalization, the term will match case exactly. This means that a search for "orange and rockland" would match "orange and rockland", "Orange and Rockland", and "Orange and rockland", but a search for "Orange and Rockland" would only match "Orange and Rockland".

Word Variations and Wildcards

It is possible to search for variations of a word using wildcards. A wildcard can represent any character or characters. The "*" character could match multiple characters, whereas "?" could match only a single character. For example, if you wanted to find documents containing electricity, electrical, or electric, you could search for electric*. To find documents with dig or dug in them, search with d?g.

Requiring and Excluding Terms

By default, none of the search results have to contain all the search terms. However, if you want to require that the results must include a word or phrase, place "+" in front of the required term. For example, if you want to search for information about signing up for automatic bill payment you could search for +"automatic bill payment" sign-up form apply.

If the search results should not include a specific term, place "-" in front of the term. For example, if you want to search for information on heating but not air conditioning, search for heat heating -ac -"air conditioning"