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Advanced Search

Last Updated: June 20, 2020

Welcome to the FDIC website search facility. Please select a help topic from the list below:

  1. The Basic Search
  2. Automatic "AND" Searches
  3. Phrase Searches
  4. "OR" Searches
  5. Does Capitalization Matter?
  6. Refining Your Search
  7. Excluding Words
  8. See Your Search Terms in the Results
  9. Spelling


The Basic Search

Doing a search is easy. Simply type one or more search terms (the words or phrase that best describe the information you want to find) into the search box and hit the Enter key or click the Search button.

This produces a results page: a list of Web pages related to your search terms, with the most relevant page appearing first, then the next, and so on.

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Automatic "AND" Searches By default, the search will return pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include " AND" between terms. For example, to search for press releases related to phishing, enter:

To broaden or restrict the search, include fewer or more terms.

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Phrase Searches

You can search for phrases by adding quotation marks. Words enclosed in double quotes ("like this") appear together in all returned documents. Phrase searches using quotation marks are useful when searching for specific titles or names.

Certain characters — like hyphens, slashes, periods, equal signs, and apostrophes — serve as phrase connectors. Phrase connectors work like quotes because they join your search words in the same way double quotes join your search words. For example, the search:

is treated as a phrase search even though the search words are not enclosed in double quotes.

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"OR" Searches

To retrieve pages that include either word A or word B, use an uppercase "OR" between terms. For example, to search for either Conference or Event, enter:

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Does Capitalization Matter?

FDIC searches are not case sensitive. For example, searches for "fdic" and "FDIC" return the same results.

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Refining Your Search

Since the search only returns pages that contain all of the words in your query, refining or narrowing your search is as simple as adding more words to the search terms you have already entered. The refined search returns a subset of the pages that were returned by your original, broader query.

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Excluding Words

You can exclude a word from your search by putting a minus sign ("-") immediately in front of the term you want to exclude. Make sure you include a space before the minus sign.

For example, the search:

will return pages about regions that do not contain the word "atlanta."

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See Your Search Terms in the Results

Most search results list one or more excerpts from the Web page to display how your search terms are used in context on that page. In the excerpt, your search terms are displayed in bold text.

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Spelling

If the automatic spell checker detects a possible spelling mistake, an alternative spelling suggestion is returned with the results. For example, searching for "secuirty" will result in the prompt

Did you mean: security

Note: Currently, the spell checker supports only US English.

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