Simple Form

In the IDB Website search simple form, users can enter words, phrases, and plain language in any of the Bank’s four official languages (English, Spanish, Portuguese and French) Results may be returned in any language. To limit the search to one language, use the advanced search form to specify the language.

Words

To search for multiple words, separate them with spaces. For example: Andean agreement trade.

Phrases

To search for an exact phrase, surround it with double quotation marks. For example: "Poverty reduction policies in Central America." A string of capitalized words is assumed to be a name. Separate a series of names with commas. Commas aren't needed when the phrases are surrounded by quotation marks.

Plain Language

To search with plain language, enter a question or concept. IDB search identifies the important words and searches for them. For example, enter a question such as: What is the Plan Puebla Panama? This query produces the same results as entering: Plan Puebla Panama.

Including and Excluding Search Terms

Users can limit searches by excluding or requiring search terms, or by limiting the areas of the document that are searched.
A minus sign (-) immediately preceding a search term (word or phrase) excludes documents containing the term.
A plus sign (+) immediately preceding a search term (word or phrase) means returned documents are guaranteed to contain the term.
If neither sign is associated with the search term, the results may include documents that do not contain the specified term as long as they meet other search criteria.

Advanced Search

The IDB Website also offers an advanced search form to allow users to delimit their search criteria. Users can search words or phrases and include and exclude search terms by simply filling in the text fields. Users can further filter the search by defining the criteria based on the following options:

• Title has: limits the search to documents that have the searched word within the title
• Language: specifies the language in which users would like the results.
• Pages were updated within: restricts results to the past week or one, two or six months.
• File format (MIME-Type): specifies the type of electronic format that users might want to restrict the search to. For example: HTML, MS Word, MS PowerPoint, MS Excel, plain text, PDF, etc.

Preferences

Users can also customize the results page by defining their preferences. These preferences include:

• Results per page: number of documents to be displayed on the results page (10, 20, 50 or 100)
• Total results: even though the search might find thousands of documents, users can restrict the results to not more than 50, 100, 1000 or 5000 documents.
  
• Show summary: define if the user wants to include the summary on the results list. Summary usually helps users identify the relevance of the document. The IDB search engine highlights the searched words within the summary. Some users, however, prefer not to include the summary in order to fit more results on the results page.
• Sort results by: define the way results should be organized. Users can sort documents in descending order by relevance, date and title. Documents can be rearranged on the results page by clicking on the labels Title & Summary, Doc Type and Date. To change from descending to ascending order, click again on the label previously selected.