Search Tips

Search Tips

ChooseMyPlate.gov's search engine quickly and easily puts information at your fingertips. The engine allows you to choose just how broad, or narrow, you would like your search to be.

Basic Search

Enter your keywords and phrases in the Search text box located in the upper right corner of any page in the ChooseMyPlate.gov website. Press the magnifying glass button to process.

Special Query Terms:

  • Include Query Term - Place a "+" sign before an essential word to include it within all search results (e.g., beans + nutrition).
  • Exclude Query Term - Place a "-" sign before a term that you want to exclude from the search results (e.g., health - heart disease).
  • Phrase Search - Search for complete phrases by enclosing them in quotation marks or connecting them with hyphens (e.g., "news releases").
  • Boolean OR Search - Use an uppercase OR between terms to retrieve information that contains either word A or word B (e.g., vitamin C OR oranges).
  • Title Search - Place "intitle:" in front of a query term to restrict results to documents containing that word in the title (e.g., intitle:vegetarian).
  • Title Search (all) - Initiate search terms by "allintitle:" to restrict results to those with all of the query words in the title (e.g., allintitle: health, grain, & rice).
  • URL Search (term) - Place "inurl:" before a query term to restrict the results to documents containing that word in the result URL (e.g., inurl:MyPlate).
  • URL Search (all) - Initiate search terms by "allinurl:" to restrict the results to those with all of the query words in the result URL (e.g., allinurl: USDA gov).

Advanced Search

The Advanced Search offers the same options as the Basic Search, but gives you new options for reducing the number of results, which can help you find exactly what you want.

Limit your result with extra search options:

  • Search by file format - Search documents in certain formats.
  • Search by language - Search for information in English or Spanish.
  • Search by publication date - Search within particular range of dates.
  • Search by subject - Choose your area of interest.

Display options:

  • Choose the number of results you would like.

Other Helpful Resources

Refer to these additional resources if you are still experiencing problems finding what you need.