How to use BBC Search
- How to use BBC Search
Whenever you search the BBC's website you will see results from all areas of the BBC, including web pages and audio and video footage, from News and Sport and other areas. You will also see results from selected websites from outside the BBC.
You can view all the results at once, or limit your search to just BBC News and Sport articles, BBC News and Sport clips, BBC TV and Radio programmes, or sites that are Elsewhere on the Web.
- All Results
To search everything on the BBC's website at once, hit the All Results tab at the top of the page (this will be selected automatically when you search for the first time), put some words into the box and hit Search.
Think about your search term – the more descriptive and specific the words, the better the results will be, and try to keep the term concise.
Results are displayed with the most informative links at the top.
Next, if relevant, is a list of BBC News and Sport headlines relating to your search subject, displayed with a note of how many days ago the story was published, most recent first. Below that are all the other BBC web pages relating to your search subject.
On the top right-hand side is a list of BBC TV and Radio programmes relating to your search, dated in order of broadcast, most recent first. Hit the More Results link at the bottom of the box to see a full page of TV and Radio results. Hit the Watch Now or Listen Now buttons to see the television programmes or hear the radio broadcasts.
Below that are BBC News and Sport clips, a mixture of video and audio content, dated in order of broadcast, most recent first (also with a More Results link at the bottom that gives you a full page of results).
Underneath this you will find Elsewhere on the Web, the best and most informative web pages on the subject you are searching for from outside the BBC. They have been selected by our editors as the best match for your search term.
- News & Sport
To search just BBC News and Sport, hit the News & Sport tab at the top of the page, put some words into the box and hit Search.
A list of headlines with articles will appear on the left. You can order this list of web page results by relevance rather than date by clicking the Sort by Relevance button at the top of the list.
You might find that when viewing the date ordered results fewer web pages appear compared to the relevance ordered results, and sometimes you might see no results at all. This is due to the relevancy thresholds assigned to the different result views.
The date ordered results have a high relevancy threshold so that your search returns the most up-to-date and relevant web pages about a subject rather than pages that are very new but do not really cover what you are looking for. The threshold of the relevancy ordered view is lower so your search returns a high number of results ordered in decreasing relevancy.
On the right-hand side of the page is a list of BBC News and Sport audio and video clips. Hit the More Results link at the bottom to see a full page of these results. Hit the Watch Now or Listen Now buttons to see or hear clips.
- TV & Radio Programmes
To search just for BBC programmes, hit the TV & Radio Programmes tab at the top of the page, put some words into the box and hit Search.
A list of results will appear, dated in order of broadcast, most recent first. Hit the Watch Now or Listen Now buttons to see the television programmes or hear the radio broadcasts.
- The Web
To search for web pages from outside the BBC, visit the BBC Home page at http://www.bbc.co.uk/ and put some words into the Search box at the top. Make sure the button above it saying ‘the BBC’ is not selected and the button saying ‘the Web’ is selected. Then hit Search: the list of results you get will be from websites outside the BBC only.
© MMVIII