The GIC search engine provides users an easy-to-use interface to search for related web pages of the HKSAR government bureaux and departments. The searching facility covers various types of documents including MS Word documents, MS Excel documents, Adobe PDF documents, MS Powerpoint documents, Rich-text-format documents, web page format documents, or plain text format documents.

2. Basic Search

1. Type in your keyword(s) or phrase(s) in the Search box. You must at least enter a keyword for the search.
2. Select "All websites" or appropriate category of websites you are looking for e.g. Law and Order or individual website of government bureaux/departments.
3. Click the "Go" button or press <Enter> key to begin the search.

Example - To search phrase from All Web Sites.

1. Type Public Services in the Search box.
   
2. Click the "Go" button or press the <Enter> key.
3. The search results will show you relevant pages on all government web sites with the keyword of "Public Services". Please note that the default search is case insensitive, i.e. Public will match PUBLIC and public.

3. Search Operators

In the Search input box, you can enter a set of keywords and combine the keywords with logical operators to confine your search to more precise results.

Operators	Examples	Results
& (and)	cyberport & design	Pages that contain both the "cyberport" and "design" keywords
| (or)	cyberport | design	Pages that contain either the "cyberport" or "design" keywords
! (not)	cyberport & !design	Pages that contain "cyberport" but not "design"
" " (phrase)	"cyberport design"	Pages that contain "cyberport design" as a phrase
* (wild card)	comput*	Pages that contain "computer" or "computing"
? (wild card)	finanli?e	Pages that contain "finalise" or "finalize"

You can use brackets to build complex queries. For example, the query

"Fire Accident" & ( Electronic | Electrical )

returns pages containing "Fire Accident" and either Electronic or Electrical, i.e., those referring to Electronic or Electrical Fire Accident.

4. Advanced Search

In the advanced search interface, you have several more options to filter your search:  

Filter Options	Selections	Explanations
File extension	Any	All documents would be searched
	.doc	Only MS Word documents would be searched
	.xls	Only MS Excel documents would be searched
	.pdf	Only Adobe PDF documents would be searched
	.ppt	Only MS Powerpoint documents would be searched
	.rtf	Only Rich-text-format documents would be searched
	.htm	Only web page format documents would be searched
	.txt	Only plain text format documents would be searched
Sort By	Score	Ranking sorted by score
	Date	Ranking sorted by date
Search Scope	Full text	All of the content in the documents would be searched
	Title	Only the title of the documents would be searched
	Keyword	Only the keyword defined in the meta tag information of the documents would be searched
	Description	Only the description defined in the meta tag information of the documents would be searched
Modification Time	All	All documents would be searched
	Selected time frame	Only those documents with the last modification date between the two selected dates would be searched.