The ABS website has over 365,000 pages and more than 120,000 downloadable files, and it's growing. To help you find information the ABS provides customised access to Google's search engine. Google searches through all of these pages for 'key words' and returns to you the most relevant documents found.
The search box is located at the top right of every page. To use it, simply enter a few short words describing the information you want to find. Click 'Go' and you will be taken to a page displaying the results of your search.
Search Box If you didn't find what you were looking for you can enter new search terms and try again.
Page Title The title often gives a good indication of what the page contains. Clicking the title on the results page will take you to the relevant document.
Description This is a short sample of text taken from a section of the document where your search terms were located.
URL The website address of the page.
Size This number is the size of the text portion of the web page, and gives you some idea of how quickly it might display.
Date Some pages, like the ABS homepage, are frequently updated. This date will indicate when google last compared results on this page.
Cached If a page has changed recently clicking this link will show you the contents of the page as it was when google last indexed it.
Similar pages Clicking this will cause Google to display pages that are related to this result. This is useful if you find a page that is close to what you want.
To find pages that include either of two search terms, add an uppercase OR between the terms.
If you are looking for an exact title or a phrase you can enclosing those words with quotation marks to match the exact phrase only.
To search for similar words place a tilde sign ("~") immediately in front of the term.
eg. "Labour" would return words such as "Employment" and "Work" also.
Use three full stops "..." between two sets of numbers to find any number within that range. This work for dates as well as measurements.
Other search engines, such as MSN or Yahoo can also be used to search the ABS website. A listing of other more commonly used engines can be found in the Google Search Engine Directory. You can search the ABS by going to the selected search engine site and entering your search term followed by 'site:abs.gov.au' (no spaces) in the search box as shown in the example below. Your search results will be limited to pages found on the ABS website.
The ABS takes no responsibility for the results returned or not returned by these search engines. This includes, but is not limited to, the accuracy and completeness of, or any advertising materials associated with, search results.
In an effort to improve our search facilities the ABS is testing a new search service provided by Google that will enable you to find even more information.
How to access the latest release of your favourite statistics
You can access the latest release of any statistical product using a shortened URL. This URL can be created by following the pattern below, where only the catalogue number will need to be changed to access different products.
www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/xxxx.y (where xxxx.y is the ABS Catalogue number)
Note: This type of shortened URL will always access the latest release of the product, and will not work for previous releases. Previous releases can easily be accessed via the "Past and Future Releases" tab once you have accessed the latest release.
You can bookmark the shortened URL using your browser's bookmark menu option. Note: Microsoft Internet Explorer refers to bookmarks as "Favorites".
Figure 1: Creating a bookmark using Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Unless otherwise noted, content on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia Licence together with any terms, conditions and exclusions as set out in the website Copyright notice. For permission to do anything beyond the scope of this licence and copyright terms contact us.
