Two ways to search, and why you should usually use both

When you search for bills or regulations, you'll see two boxes:

Natural Language Search — describe what you're looking for the way you'd describe it to a colleague. "restrictions on drone use by police departments" or "utility rate increases for low-income households."
Terms Search — build a precise search out of specific words and phrases, with rules for how they must appear.

These aren't two separate tools you have to choose between. When you fill in both, we combine the results — so a bill or regulation that shows up as a strong match in either search tends to rank higher, and one that shows up as a good match in both rises to the top. If you only use one box, that's fine too — you'll just be relying on one signal instead of two.

Practical takeaway: if your Terms Search isn't turning up what you expect, add a plain-language description in Natural Language Search (or vice versa). The two often catch different things — Natural Language Search understands meaning and context even when the exact words don't match; Terms Search finds exact wording even when the meaning is ambiguous.

Natural Language Search: search by meaning

Type a sentence or phrase describing the topic, policy, or situation you care about. You don't need exact legal terminology — the system looks for bills and regulations that are about what you typed, not just ones that contain the same words.

This is especially useful when:

• You don't know the exact term legislators or agencies use for a topic.
• You want to find related bills even if they're phrased very differently from each other.
• You're exploring a topic broadly before narrowing down.

Example: Searching "protecting gig workers' benefits" can surface bills about "independent contractor classification" or "portable benefits" even if the words "gig worker" never appear in the bill text.

Tip: Natural Language Search always looks at a short summary of each bill or regulation. When you're searching bills in legislative sessions from 2026 onwards, it also looks at individual sections of the bill — so a current-session bill can match your search because of something specific in one section, even if the bill as a whole is about something broader. (This section-level matching isn't available for earlier bills or for regulations yet.)

Terms Search: search by exact wording

Terms Search gives you fine control by letting you build rules about which words and phrases must (or must not) appear. Each field lets you choose how terms should match:

How fields combine

Think of each field as its own mini-search, and the fields as a checklist — a result has to satisfy all of the fields you've provided. Within a single "All of" or "Any of" row, though, the terms in that row are more flexible: an "All of" row requires every word in it, while an "Any of" row only needs one.  

Example:  This finds bills that mentions [ "broadband" and "rural" ] but excludes anything that also mentions "municipal."
- (All of): broadband rural
- (None of): municipal

Additionally the query allows more than one field for most term search types.  When more than one field of that type is used, their results are combined logically

Example:  This finds bills that mentions  [ "broadband" and "rural ] OR [ "internet" ] but excludes anything that also mentions "municipal."
- (All of): broadband rural

       OR

  (All of): internet 
- (None of): municipal

Terms Search variations

Phrases: Put quotes around multiple words (e.g., "electric vehicle") to search for that exact phrase rather than the words appearing separately anywhere in the text.
Wildcards: Add an asterisk at the end of a word (e.g. driv*) to match any word starting with those letters — useful for catching "drive", "driving", "driver" etc. in one term. Wildcards need at least three letters before the asterisk.
Near to: Use this when you want two ideas to be related in the text without requiring an exact phrase. For example, a near to search of tax credit will find text where those words appear close to each other, in either order — catching "tax credit" "credit against state tax" and similar variations.

Filters (state, session, bill type, sponsor, etc.)

The filters section if search such as chamber, session, bill type, progress, sponsor, and similar, narrow your results to a specific scope but don't affect how results are ranked or scored. Think of them as "only show me results from this set" rather than part of the search itself. Use them to scope a broad topic search down to, say, one state, one session.

Common mistakes

Typing "OR" or "AND" into a term box
It's natural to want to write  e.g. tax OR revenue the way you would in a search engine — but Terms Search doesn't read words like AND, OR, or NOT typed into a box. The row type is the operator.

Typing a search-engine-style query into one box
Terms Search isn't a single search bar that parses quotes, minus signs, and bare words together like a general web search engine. Each box does one job, and you build your search by adding a row for each condition rather than combining symbols in one line.

Expecting "Near to" to relate to terms in other rows

A "Near to" row only checks distance between the terms within that row — it has no knowledge of terms you've put in other rows. All your rows still have to match independently; "Near to" doesn't reach across rows to connect them.

Quick reference

• Want broad, meaning-based results? Use Natural Language Search.
• Want precise control over exact words in the bill or regulation? Use Terms Search.
• Want the best of both? Fill in both — matches that show up in both searches rank highest.
• Want to require an exact phrase? Use quotes in Terms Search.
• Want to catch word variations? Use a wildcard (word*).
• Want two ideas to appear near each other without an exact phrase? Use "Near to."
• Want to narrow by state, session, or type? Use the filters — they scope results but don't change ranking.