This comprehensive Search Guide provides valuable information and tips on using our search facilities. If you have any unanswered questions or wish to make a comment on this guide go to Feedback.

Contributor: In-house

Top Tip: select an Index from the drop-down menu to prevent duplicate search results

How To Use Our Search Service

• Type your target word or phrase in the search box above

• Press the 'Search' button to start your search

go to the top of the page


Searching for Creative Professionals?

There are several ways you can search for creative professionals at AbleStable®:

• Use Search (this page) to return broad results

• Use the horizontal multicoloured 'Creative Area' buttons available on our Homepage and many other pages on our site to 'drill down' through Creative Areas and their associated Disciplines. This method produces fast focussed results.

• Use our Directory Index which provides a complete list of Creative Areas, Disciplines, and Job Descriptions at AbleStable®. This allows you to gain a broad picture of the kinds of Creative Areas and Disciplines available at AbleStable®.

go to the top of the page


Search Rules

AbleStable's® search engine helps you find documents on this web site only. Tell the search service what you're looking for by typing in keywords, phrases, or questions in the search box. The search service responds by giving you a list of all the web pages in our index relating to those topics. The most relevant content will appear at the top of your results.

go to the top of the page


Quick Tips

Our Quick Tips provide 7 great ways to improve your searches at AbleStable®. For more detailed advice and help go to A Guide to Searching Effectively at AbleStable® which follows below. Don't worry if you find a large number of results. The most relevant content will always appear at the top of the result/s page/s. Seven great tips to better searching:

1. Be clear and focused about what you are searching for

2. Double check your spelling

3. Add words to your query if the results are too broad

4. Subtract words from your query if the results are too narrow

5. To help you find what you're looking for quickly search a realm of our site, available by clicking the small down arrow next to 'All Indexes Below' in the Search box.

6. Think of different ways the creative professional you're searching for might be described. For instance, a creative professional who specialises in advertising design might be listed under: Design, Designer, Advertising, Advertising Design, Ad Design.

7. If you find the creative professional doesn't appear to be listed at AbleStable®, use the star symbol * before and after your search word. All words beginning and ending with your root word will be matched (for example, *design* will match web design, designs, designer etc.

go to the top of the page


Reading Search Results

• The words 'Search Engine (your target word or phrase)' will appear at the top of your browser window. This provides a quick reference point should you open additional browser windows

• The following words will appear at the top of the results page 'Your search for (your target word or phrase) found the following documents (of # documents searched). Displaying documents # of #, with best matches first'.

• The words 'Documents # of # displayed' ' will appear at the bottom of the results page. If there is more than one result page the number of results pages will be shown along with 'Next' or 'Previous' depending on the context.

• If a target word or phrase is found in a page it is shown in bold

• If a target word or phrase is found in a page, a short 'Excerpt' quote is shown for reference

• If no search results are available for your target word or phrase the words 'Your search for (your target word or phrase) did not return any matches (of # documents were searched).

go to the top of the page


What is an Index?

Webster's dictionary describes an "index" as a sequential arrangement of material. Our index is a large, growing, organised collection of Web pages at AbleStable® (www.ablestable.com). The 'index' becomes larger every day as our site grows. We have technology that crawls our site looking for links to new pages.

go to the top of the page


What is a Word?

When searching, think of a word as a combination of letters and numbers. The search service needs to know how to separate words and numbers to find what you want at AbleStable®. You can separate words using white space and tabs.

go to the top of the page


What is a Phrase?

You can link words and numbers together into phrases if you want specific words or numbers to appear together in your result pages. If you want to find an exact phrase, use "double quotation marks" around the phrase when you enter words in the search box.

Example #1: To find a particular creative Discipline, type "landscape photography" in the search box. You can also create phrases using punctuation or special characters such as dashes, underscore lines, commas, slashes, or dots.

Example #2: Try searching for 1-800-999-9999 instead of 1 800 999 9999. The dashes link the numbers together as a phrase.

go to the top of the page


Simple Tips for More Exact Searches

Searches are case insensitive. Searching for "Fur" will match the lowercase "fur" and uppercase "FUR".

Including or excluding words:

To make sure that a specific word is always included in your search topic, place the plus (+) symbol before the key word in the search box. To make sure that a specific word is always excluded from your search topic, place a minus (-) sign before the keyword in the search box.

Example: To find a designer who is a web designer but not a print designer, try "designer +web -print".