Search Tips

The Basics

Simply type in a few words or phrases and click on the submit button to initiate a search. You will be presented with an initial set of results.

On the right-hand side, you are given the option of restricting the search results to a different slice, or facet, of HBS-wide Web content. Results from Harvard University Websites outside of HBS are also available.  The "hit count" (approximate number of results) found in each facet is displayed in parentheses next to the label. Click on the label of the desired facet to see the search results from the corresponding Web content. Some of the options that may be available are:

• HBS Web
  • Alumni
  • Baker Library
  • Exec Ed
  • HBS Publishing Catalog
  • HBS Working Knowledge
  • Faculty and Research
  • MBA
  • Other HBS
• Other Harvard Web

To easily invoke other searches for your query, use the query resubmit box on the right-hand side of the Search results page.   This will send your query to other search systems (examples listed below).  Clicking on a resubmit link will display results from that source.

• Baker Library catalog
• Google Scholar

Quick Tips

In general, using more words in your query will result in more precise search results.

All words you use will be included in the search, i.e., only documents in which all words in the query occur will appear in the search results.

Words enclosed within double quotes will be treated as phrases. So a search for "social enterprise" (with quotes included) will return a list of pages in which both those words appear next to each other in that order.

Try to use specific terms that are likely to be found only in the documents you seek.

Search is not case-sensitive, so you'll get the same results whether you search for "Harvard", "harvard", or "harVaRD"

Advanced Search Options

Wildcard searching is available—the characters "*" (matches zero or more characters) and "?" (matches one character) are supported. Please note that wildcard expansion will occur in individual terms, not phrases. So wildcards used with quotes are ignored.

For example, searching for...

• program*s
    finds pages containing any of the following terms: "programs", "programmers", etc.
• m?a
    finds pages containing any of the following terms: "MBA", "MFA", "MCA", etc.

You can restrict searches to certain portions of web documents, such as titles, urls, and embedded hypertext links, by using the corresponding field name (e.g., "title", "url", "link") in the query. Note that the field name should be in lower case, and immediately followed by a colon. There should be no spaces after the colon and before the search terms.

For example, searching for...

• url:mba
    finds pages with "mba" anywhere in the URL.
• hours url:library
    finds pages with "library" anywhere in the URL and "hours" anywhere in the page.
• title:Doctoral Programs
     finds pages with the phrase "Doctoral Programs" anywhere in the title.
• site:hbswk.hbs.edu
     finds pages on the site "hbswk.hbs.edu".
• link:www.exed.hbs.edu
     finds pages containing at least one link to a page with "www.exed.hbs.edu" in its URL.
• description:media
     finds pages containing "media" in the keywords metatag.
• imagelink:alumni
     finds pages containing "alumni" in an image link.

Contact Information

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