How the Search Works General notes: The search does not depend upon upper- and lower-case matching. When looking for matches, the search will look for the characters you have provided even when they are imbedded inside a word. When the search finds more than one company the page returned by the search will contain a list. You can then select one or more of these to see the details that have been placed in the database. The search has been restricted to return at most 20 companies. The database makes the search on the basis of what you type in the four boxes on this screen. The search request is evaluated using all the criteria specified in the boxes. (However, if nothing is specified in a box, then that box does not take part in the search.) The company/trading name search: Note that in the company/trading name box the words "company" and "limited", are not used for the search. The company search uses all the words specified. (For example, World Toys Limited is searched using the words "world" and "toys"). Any company name containing all the words is seen as a match and is then tested to see if it satisfies the other boxes. The Products/Services name search: In the Products and Services box each word is considered separately and compared with key words provided by companies on registration. A match is made when just one word is found. Take care with highly generalised keywords here as, for example, the keywords "IT Services Software" will match to all companies registering the keyword "services". The Location name search: Towns, counties and sub-areas (local districts) are all inspected during this search. The box works in a similar way to products and services. A searcher can specify "Southampton Winchester", and companies in either of these will be selected. Postcodes: You can type either the first two letters of a post code or the complete postal area (the part before the space) in the Postal Code box. Therefore a search specifying SO will select companies in SO1 to SO23, but SO23 can be specified alone if that is required.