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SEARCH HELP

The Los Angeles County Portal web site provides a comprehensive search feature to assist customers in finding the right information faster. Developed using powerful search engine technology, the Portal’s search application indexes web pages and enables customers to locate specific information within the thousands of documents that reside online on the Portal or in over 50 departmental and commission web sites.

When you enter a keyword(s) or phrase in the Search window, your search or query is compared against the County’s index of web pages. When a match occurs, the hit or result is listed in order of best match or greatest number of keyword occurrences.

The Portal search application has been organized to help you find information quickly. There are also ways for you to define the scope of your search or narrow down your search criteria to bring back fewer, but more exact, results.

Simple Search

A simple search takes the keyword(s) or phrase that was entered in the Search window and compares it against a specific index. In a simple search, this index or collection of web pages will include those documents that reside on the Portal and those documents that reside on the department or commission web site, but only down to the service level; that is, two levels down from the site’s Home Page.

Guidelines for defining the scope of a simple search include:

Selecting keywords that are meaningful to the topic you are looking for, and when possible, using unique or uncommon terms.

Checking keywords for spelling errors.

If the information you are looking for is not found, refine your search by:

Search within results – Enter a more specific or unique keyword(s) in the Search window and select Search within results, or

Try an advanced search.

Advanced Search

An advanced search takes the keyword(s) or phrase that was entered in the Search window and compares it against a specific index. Like the simple search, the index or collection of web pages for the advanced search includes those documents that reside on the Portal, as well as documents that reside on the department or commission web site, but only down to the service level (i.e., two levels down from the Home Page).

Guidelines for defining the scope of an advanced search include:

Selecting a search method from All Words, Any Words, or Exact Phrase. For example, if you used the search
term ‘Los Angeles County’ and select:

All Words – the search results would include only those web pages that contained all three search terms: ‘Los,’ ‘Angeles’ and ‘County’
but not necessarily in the order entered

Any Words – the search results would include only those web pages that contain any one (or more) of the terms; either: ‘Los,’ ‘Angeles’ or ‘County’

Exact Phrase – the search results would include only those web pages that contain all three search terms in the order entered: ‘Los Angeles County’

Selecting Advanced Operators as the search method. Advanced or Boolean operators represent a form of algebra that reduces values to true or false. More importantly, they can be used to form a more precise search query. Standard operators include: <AND> <OR> <NOT>

Tip: Use AND between the keywords in your query to find documents that contain both terms.
For example: County AND Los Angeles
will find documents in which both search terms appear.

Tip: Use OR between the keywords in your query to find documents that contain either or both terms.
For example: County OR Los Angeles
will find documents in which at least one of the search terms appears. Documents that contain both terms will also be included.

Tip: Use NOT in your query to exclude keywords.
For example: County NOT Los Angeles
will find documents in which only the term ‘County’ appears. Documents that contain both terms will be excluded.

Use Advanced Operators with keyword(s) for a more precise search, but avoid complicated query structures.

If the information you are looking for is not found, refine your search by:

Search within results – Enter a more specific or unique keyword(s) in the Search window and select Search within results, or

Try an advanced content search.

Advanced Content Search

An advanced content search takes the keyword(s) or phrase that was entered in the Search window and compares it against an index that includes all web-enabled documents on the County Portal. Conversely, with the advanced content search you can also narrow the scope of your search by limiting it to one or more ‘collections’ of documents.

The Portal search application has separated documents into specific groups based on content. The search application refers to these groupings or categories as ‘collections’. Limiting your search to one or more collections will speed up the search process and return fewer, but more exact, results. This is because only documents within the selected collection(s) are searched for the required information. For example, if you were looking for an Employment Application form, searching a collection that contained only County forms would be a faster way to locate the Employment Application than searching through all of the web-enabled documents on the Portal.

The County Portal has seven collections. One or more collections may be selected and searched simultaneously.

Search All Categories – searches all web-enabled documents on the County Portal.

Doing Business With Us – searches a specific collection of documents related to purchasing and contract opportunities with the County of Los Angeles.

Forms – searches a specific collection of County forms.

Permits and Licenses – searches a specific collection of documents related to County permits, licenses, and associated issues.

Property and Tax – searches a specific collection of documents related to County property and tax issues.

Publications and Reports – searches a specific collection of reports, brochures, handbooks, manuals and other County publications available online.

Board Correspondence – searches a specific collection of Board Letters and associated documents, all of which have been converted to Portable Document Format (PDF).
NOTE: To refine a search within the Board Correspondence collection, click on Public Info in the top navigation bar and select Board Correspondence from the drop-down menu. On the screen that appears you can specify a Department/Agency name and/or a Document Date Range.

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