Search tips

Find out all about searching in our business directory.

Easy search

In order to search for something you have to do is enter one or more descriptive words and press "Enter" (or click on "Go" or "Search"). A list of relevant hits will then appear. If you enter several search terms, the directory will search for all terms individually and together (an "or search"). Entries containing several or all of the search terms will be listed first. This means you can narrow down your search results by linking several search terms together. The directory searches for the exact words you have entered. If necessary, please use alternative forms, e.g. publisher and publishers.

What exactly is searched?

The directory searches according to the following database fields: "Company", "Products" and on the national pages also according to (optional) "City" All other fields are ignored. Nor is it possible to search for a certain ID or customer number.

Wildcard search

If you are not sure how to spell the desired term, you can also carry out a "Wildcard search" or "* search". If you search for PlumBer* you will get results which contain the word "Plumber" or "Plumber ", etc.

Linking search terms

To restrict your search, you can carry out an "and search". If you link your words with a "+" sign, only hits which include all search terms will appear. IMPORTANT! Make sure you place a ?+? in front of the first word too, and separate the words using spaces. For example: +computer +shop . You can also exclude words which you definitely don't want in your search results, e.g. car dealer-garage. This will ignore any entries containing the search term "garage".

Stop words

The directory ignores general words and letters which it recognises as "stop words". The directory automatically skips words such as "Ltd" or "and" as well as single numbers and letters because these terms don't help to narrow down the search and make it considerably slower. Entries with less than three letters are completely ignored.

Are capital letters and accents taken into consideration?

The directory search engine doesn't differentiate between lower and upper-case letters. All letters are interpreted as being lower case. No matter if you search for plumber, PLUMBER or PLUmBer you will get the same result. The preset directory search engine also ignores punctuation marks and special characters such as "." "," "&", etc.

Groups of words

With this directory you can search for groups of words by adding quotation marks. Words enclosed in quotation marks ( "like here" ) will appear in all texts as they stand.