Matching types define the way your search string will be analysed against the IATE database.

Click on the 'Open expanded search' button to change the search matching option and find more targeted results. Under ‘Matching’, select the relevant matching option:

All words (default)
Exact match
Exact string
Partial string
Any word (*)
Regular expression (*)

All words

'All words' is the default option and retrieves terms which contain all of the words in the search field.

For example, searching for 'European Commission' will retrieve:
European Commission
European Commission of Agriculture
European Travel Commission
European Travel Commissions
Commission of the European Communities

Language-specific rules apply for this default matching option (retrieval of plurals, inflected forms, etc.).
For more details, consult the table at the bottom of the page.

Exact match

'Exact match' retrieves terms which match the query exactly.

By default, search strings containing characters with diacritic marks will retrieve the diacritic characters and the base characters as exact matches.

For example, an ‘Exact match’ search for 'role' in French will retrieve:
role
rôle

and an ‘Exact match’ search for 'déjà vu' in French will retrieve:
déjà vu
deja vu

This also applies to special characters and their extended equivalents.

For example, an ‘Exact match’ search for Füße in German will retrieve:
Füße
Fuße
Fusse

It also applies to different types of hyphenation and spaces.

For example, an ‘Exact match’ search for energy generating product in English will retrieve:
energy generating product
energy-generating product (with a hyphen)
energy–generating product (with an en-dash)
energy—generating product (with an em-dash)

Exact string

'Exact string' retrieves results which contain the search query exactly as it is, with full words. Results may contain additional words before or after the search string.

Partial string

‘Partial string’ retrieves results containing the search string within a longer string. The string doesn’t need to be full words. For example, searching for ‘book’ will retrieve ֥‘book’, but also ‘e-book’, ‘booking’, ‘notebook’, etc. (i.e. results which contain ‘book’ inside a longer string). This matching option is the only one possible when searching in fields other than the Term field.

Any word (*)

If you select ‘Any word’, results matching any one of the words in the search string will be displayed below the more relevant results (e.g. if you search for 'European Commission' with ‘Any wordְ’ selected, ‘European citizen’ would be displayed below the 'all words' results listed above).

In all cases, results which are not an exact match are shown beneath the message: No exact results found with your settings.

regular expression (*)

‘Regular expression’ allows advanced users to run more complex searches using these patterns ☍.

SPECIFIC LANGUAGE RULES

Overview of specific language rules (stemming, stopwords) applied with the various matching options:

Source language	Matching option	Language rules applied (stemming, stopwords)	Generic improvements applied (diacritics, hyphenation types)
BG, CS, DA, DE, EL, EN, ES, FI, FR, GA, HU, IT, LT, LV, NL, PT, RO, SV (languages with language-specific analyser)	Exact match Exact string All words (default) Any word Partial string Regular expression	No No Yes Yes No No	Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
ET, HR, MT, PL, SK, SL (EU standard analyser)	Exact match Exact string All words (default) Any word Partial string Regular expression	No No Yes Yes No No	Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No
ANY as source language	Exact match Exact string All words (default) Any word Partial string Regular expression	No No Yes (for each language) Yes (for each language) No No	Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes No

(*) USERS AND SEARCH ACCESS RIGHTS

Check below how different IATE users can use the matching options:

User group	Matching options
EXTERNAL NON-LOGGED-IN USERS	Exact match Exact string All words Partial string
EXTERNAL LOGGED-IN USERS	Exact match Exact string All words Any word Partial string
INTERNAL LOGGED-IN USERS	Exact match Exact string All words Any word Partial string
TRANSLATOR and above	Exact match Exact string All words Any word Partial string Regular expression