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, news and sport articles and audio and video footage. You will also see results from selected websites from around the web.
You can limit your search to only BBC News and Sport articles; BBC Audio and Video content or World Wide Web sites, by selecting one of the search buttons shown below.
Searching all of the BBC
You can search everything on the BBC's website at once by selecting 'All of the BBC' Search.
Select the All of the BBC search button (this will be selected automatically when you search for the first time).
Enter some words into the box and hit Search.
Tip: think about your search words - the more descriptive and specific the better. Try searching for 'Siamese cats' rather than just 'cats' to see the difference this makes.
Results
When you hit Search your results will be returned on a page that looks like this:
Latest BBC News and Sport Headlines
For some searches you will see the latest related BBC News and Sports headlines. These will be displayed at the top of the results page and will show the time the story was written.
BBC Pages
Below the BBC News and Sport headlines you will see all the BBC web pages that are related to your search words. The web pages that are most closely related to your search terms will be at the top of the list. Sometimes you will see results that are labelled BBC best link; these have been picked by our editors as being the pages which best match your search.
BBC Audio and Video
On the right hand side of the page you will see BBC audio and visual content that match your search words. You can watch or listen to these items.
This is only a small selection of the BBC audio and video programmes that match your search words, to see more click the More results from BBC Audio & Video link at the bottom of the panel.
Searching for BBC Audio and Video
You can search across BBC audio and video content.
Select the BBC Audio & Video search button.
Enter your words into the search box and hit Search.
Results
The results that you see are a mixture of BBC video and audio content. Each programme and clip will show the date of the clip, the available formats and a brief description of its content.
Can't find the programme you're looking for? This is a new service and we have only made a few BBC programmes available. In the next few months new programmes and news will be added.
Web Results
Below the Audio and Video results on the right you will sometimes see results from the Web that match your search terms. These are not BBC pages but websites from around the world that have been selected by our editors as the best match for your search.
Searching for Web Sites
You can search for non-BBC websites from around the world.
Select The Web search button.
Enter your words into the search box and hit Search.
Results
The results that you see are from the web.
BBC Recommended Results
Sometimes you will see results that are labelled BBC recommends; these are web sites that have been picked by our editors as being the pages which best match your search word.
Why search the Web with the BBC?
Searching for BBC News and Sport Articles
You can search across all BBC News and BBC Sport articles and websites.
Select the BBC News and Sport search button.
Enter your words into the search box and hit Search.
Results
The results that you see are a mixture of BBC News articles and BBC Sport stories.
BBC News & Sport pages
Sometimes you will see results that are labelled BBC best link; these have been picked by our editors as being the pages which best match your search word.
Viewing results ordered by relevance
BBC News and Sport search results will be automatically listed in date order with the most recent article first. You can choose to order the results by relevance by clicking the Sort by relevance link.
