Page based search results

If a web page has more than one instance of the search term the search results will have only a single entry for the page, not as previously an entry for each instance. Therefore, there is no way of knowing if the search hit is for a single instance on the page or many instances. (The search result does show the text around the hit with the search term highlighted and if that section of text includes other instances, they are also highlighted). This makes it more difficult to be sure you have checked all the instances of the search term on a page. Dependent of the page type the following strategies can help:

i. Plain text on a page

Every instance of the search term on the page is highlighted, so it should be relatively easy, if the page is not too long, to scroll down to see all the instances. Where the page is too long to make this easy then entering the search term again in the Browsers search function, (Control-F in many browsers), will enable you to skip between the search result instances.

ii. In a dropdown list on a page

Where a page uses a dropdown list, (usually to select an item to view), the text within the dropdown IS included in the search results, but is NOT highlighted. Neither can it be found using the Browsers search function. Often the result will be a page with no highlighting visible. The only option here is to dropdown the list and scroll down it to find the search term yourself.

iii. In a data page

As in plain text pages, all instances of the search term are highlighted. However, with potentially thousands of data rows, only a few of which are shown on the current page scrolling through all the rows to see