Here are some tips on finding a dojo in the Aikido Dojo Search Engine.

First off, you should understand that the search engine will look for dojo that match all of the criteria that you set. Therefore, if you put too many search criteria in, there's actually less chance of finding dojo that fit all of your search criteria. For example, if you put something in "Self Defense" in the Dojo Name field, "Gracie" in the Intructor(s) field, "Tomiki" in the Style field, "ASU" in the Affiliation field, "New Rochelle" in the City field, and "New York" in the State field, you'd be looking for any dojo that matches all of those criteria. (Note: There are no dojo in the United States that fits that description.)

Start with a nice, simple search. For example, if you live in Walnut Creek, California, and you're looking for an ASU affiliated dojo near you, you might want to first try just entering "ASU" under "affiliation" and "CA" under "State," without entering "Walnut Creek" for city. That way, you're looking broader than you need, and you'll get fewer "Sorry -- no matches were found" messages.

If you're looking for a specific instructor, just try their last name. This will help get rid of whether or not you should use "Bill," "William," "Pat," or "Patricia" as their first name and such.

In other words, the less stuff you search for in the first place, the more matches you'll get. Also, watch out about searching for phrases that are unnecessary. Therefore, instead of looking for "Iwama Aikido" in the Style field, you'll want to just look for "Iwama."

Also, try taking a look at this section of the weblinks portal. Here, you'll find a lot of affiliations that are used in the list itself, many of which will come up.

Here's the Frequently Asked Questions list about this search engine.

Hope that helps!