Research Guides: Government Documents: Web Searching

Government Search Engines

Both of the following search engines are run by the Government Printing Office (GPO) to discover government information.

USA.gov
Search engine of government websites. Also designed for browsing by category.
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Maintained by USAGov (formerly the Federal Citizen Information Center), a division of the U.S. General Services Administration's Technology Transformation Service.

FDsys This link opens in a new window
FDsys (Federal Digital System) provides access to online Federal Government publications from all three branches. Service of the U.S. Government Printing Office.
Also try the GPO's new beta search site, govinfo

govinfo
Beta search of more than a million freely-available official publications from all three branches of the Federal Government
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govinfo is a new government search engine designed to replace FDsys. It is currently in development and looking for feedback.

Finding Government Sources in General Search Engines

Major commercial search engines such as Google can be searched easily for government publications using the "site:" search command. To do this, begin your search with site: and then the website you want to search within (no http://www and no space between the colon and the website), followed by your usual search terms.

A search of the EPA's website for information about climate change would be:

site:epa.gov climate change

A search of the Ohio Secretary of State's website for information about absentee ballots would be:

site:sos.state.oh.us absentee

You can also search all .gov websites with a search for "site:.gov" though this will include the federal government, many state governments, and even some local governments.