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Search tips

These search tips aim to help you use the European Medicines Agency's (EMA) medicine and global sitewide searches more effectively.
Corporate Medicines

Searching our website's content

This website hosts pages where you can search for specific content. These pages also enable filtering to refine your search:

  • News
  • Upcoming and past events
  • What’s new – listing new and updated content as soon as it is published
  • European experts – providing a list of experts who contribute to EMA’s activities
  • General search page – featuring advanced options, easy to enable by clicking the ‘Search’ button in the top right corner of the screen on any page, or via the ‘Find medicines’ page
  • Find medicine – providing information on find medicines authorised for human or veterinary use and herbal products in all stages of the marketing authorisation procedure

You can also download all metadata we publish on medicine-related web pages in table format via Download medicine data.

Searching by keyword

Search keywords refer to words or phrases that users are most likely to type in to find the information they are looking for on a search engine or website.

Homepage search

The small search box in the top right corner of this website designates our sitewide search. 

It enables you to type in keywords or phrases related to the content you are searching for. It then lists search results on our general search page. 

To do this, the sitewide search looks for your keywords in all the website content. It also provides you with suggestions.

General search page

On the General search page itself, you can refine your keyword search.

You can choose how you want to search:

  • Any word – to find content with any of your individual keywords
  • All words – to find content with all your keywords on one page or in a document title
  • Exact phrase – to find content with the exact keyword or phrase in the same order

You can change the sort option to ‘Closest match’ if you want to see the list of results based on your keywords, rather than on the newest published or updated pages or documents.

Searching for documents

To find documents on this website, you can search by document title or reference number as part of your keyword search

You can further filter the search results by selecting specific document types to find the exact document you are looking for.

Choose how to sort your results

This website renders search results as 'newest first' by default. It does so by prioritising sorting for first published or last updated. 

You can reverse this sorting order to show the oldest first.

You can also sort by:

  • Closest match – results that closely match your keywords and search options (any word, all words, exact phrase)
  • Alphabetical order – A to Z or Z to A

If you get too many results to be able to sort effectively, use the filters or add more keywords to refine your search.

Why you may not be able find certain medicines

The medicine you are looking for may be authorised in individual Member States via national procedures, rather than centrally via EMA. Only medicines evaluated by EMA are available on this website.

You may not be able to obtain a complete list of available treatment options for a specific condition by searching on EMA's website.

Check the national registers of authorised medicines for finding medicines authorised via national procedures.

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