Enter the type of business in the Category field, or enter the name of a business in the Business Name field.

Then enter the name of a city in the City field and select a province or territory from the pull-down menu.

To search throughout an entire province or territory, leave the city field blank.

Here are some tips to help you search effectively with the Simple Search form:

• In the Category field, enter a word related to the type of business you're interested in, for example florists. The Business Finder service will return a list of all categories that match the word, for example Florist Shops and Florist Equipment & Supplies. You can then select from the list of matching categories to display the individual business listings.

• You can also select a category from a list of the most common categories by clicking on the Browse or Category Browser links on the search form.

• Fill in the Business Name field to find businesses whose name contains a particular word or words. You can enter the full business name, or just part of the name. For example, any of the following entries (among others) could be used in the Business Name field to find Jones and Sons Trucking: Jones and Sons Trucking, Jones, or Jones Trucking. It is usually best to omit words like Company and Incorporated and function words like and.

• If you're not sure how to spell a name, you can use the wild card character, *. For example, r*d will match Reed, Reid, and Read (among others).

Other search options:

• The Detailed Search form lets you narrow your search further, to specific streets, postal codes, or telephone area codes.

• The Search by Distance form lets you search for businesses near a location you specify.

What to do if no matching listings are found

There are several reasons why no matching listings may be found even when you have reason to believe there probably are some listings:

• The name of the category you typed may not be recognized. Try again using a different word to describe the category or use a fragment of a category name (such as automo* to include automobile and automotive categories). You can also click on the Browse or Category Browser links to select from a hierarchy of over 800 common categories.

• Something may have been misspelled. Correct any spelling mistakes and search again.

• Abbreviations are not recognized by the service, so be sure that all words are spelled out in full and then search again.