General Search Questions

1. What is Advisorcentre and how do I use it?

   AdvisorCentre is an easy to use search engine which allows you to search and find a financial advisor that is reight to you. Search for numerous financial advisor services including portfolio management, investments, retirement planning, educational planning, estate planning, insurance, taxes, and business finances.
   
   AdvisorCentre offers you three equally effective methods to search for an advisor. These include a simple search, an advanced search and a search wizard. To use any of these services, simply click on the search page where you can choose the search method that is most useful for you.

2. How do I find what I'm looking for with an AdvisorCentre search?

   Our primary goal is to help you easily find what you’re looking for on AdvisorCentre. We offer three kinds of searches on our site, a simple search, an advanced search and a search wizard.
   
   Our simple search page is designed to help you find the right financial advisor to meet your needs quickly and easily. While we can’t provide personalized search assistance, we can offer plenty of tips to help make your search the most productive. There are several key strategies that you can use to get the best results.
   
   First, make sure to be specific and descriptive as you can with your keywords. For example, if you are looking for a name of a financial advisor in a specific location, use [Bob Smith in Vancouver BC] rather than [Bob Smith] or if you are looking for specific help on a product, use [RRSP service in Vancouver BC] instead of [RRSP].
   
   If you're looking for an exact match, try a phrase search. When you enclose your search query in quotation marks, you'll only get results for the exact terms you entered in the order you entered them. For example, ["Bob Smith"] rather than [Bob Smith].
   
   If you are looking for additional search tips, you can learn about the advanced search and search wizard below.

3. How do I find and Advisor, but can’t remember his name?

   One of the easiest methods to find a particular advisor you are looking for is to use the advanced search tool. Simply choose any one of the relevant categories within the advanced search feature such as city and province and the search results will return the relevant information that AdvisorCentre has in its search database.
   
   Some of the other categories available to you in the advanced search are:

   • Advisors year of experience
   • Type of fees or fee structure the advisor charges
   • Whether the advisor will provide you with references
   • Value range of the assets you are looking to invest
   • Languages spoken by the advisor
   • Advisors professional designation
   • Advisors industry sector
   • Products offered by the advisor
   • The city where the advisor works
   • The province where the advisor is licensed

4. Does AdvisorCentre support wildcard searches?

   The wildcard attribute, usually denoted with *, allows you to search for more keywords without being too specific. For example, a search for [ Bob * ] would return [ Bob Smith ] or [ Bob Jones ] or [ Bob Anstey ], etc. AdvisorCentre currently doesn't support searches that use the wildcard attribute. This is under development and may be implemented in the future.

5. How can I limit my search results to pages from a specific city or province?

   The best way to limit your results to a specific city or province is to make sure the area you are looking for is one of your search terms. In the simple search box, try to be specific with your search. For example, [ Bob Smith Vancouver BC ] will yield the best search results to help you find what you’re looking for.

6. How do I use the search wizard?

   The search wizard is designed to provide you with a step by step search process to make finding an advisor easier then ever. Simply follow the prompts, enter the requested search text or choose from the pull-down menu, and click continue to the next step. Once you reach the last step, your selected search results will be displayed. It's that easy!

7. Why can’t I find my search terms on the pages in my search results?

   As we build our database of financial advisors, there will occasionally be geographic and professional segments of the financial advisor market that have not been added to our comprehensive database. This will have the unfortunate consequence of not providing the exact search terms in your page results.

8. I don’t live in Canada, so why can’t I search for advisors in my country?

   Currently, AdvisorCentre is only offered to website visitors in Canada. All of the advisors listed in our search engine are Canadian and only provide services in Canada. In the near future, we plan to offer our search engine services to website visitors searching for financial advisors in other countries.
   
   If you are a financial advisor and you want to be listed on AdvisorCentre in your country, please use our notification form to let us know.

Search Troubleshooting

1. Does the AdvisorCentre search engine let me use common words like "an" and "in"?

   When you search for multiple keywords using the AdvisorCentre search engine, certain "stop words" such as "an", "in" and "the" are ignored. For example, a search for [ an Advisor in the Vancouver, BC area ] only returns results for [ Advisor Vancouver BC area ]. This is done to help keep our search engine fast and provide the most relevant search results.

2. Does the AdvisorCentre search recognize punctuation in my search?

   AdvisorCentre does recognize certain punctuation within your search, but only when they are together with other text in the search. For example, a search for [ Mr. Bob Smith ! ] will actually search for [ Mr Bob Smith ]. There are certain exceptions to allow for punctuation within the search. Another example of a search with punctuation [ $10,000 RRSP investment ] will be result in a search for [ 10000 RRSP investment ].

3. I just clicked on a link to an advisor's page and got an error 404, page not found. What happened?

   If you perform a search for a page that returns a 404 error via the http headers, please contact us and let us know about the page error. Often, one of our advisor listings may have moved and our database wasn’t able to get an updated web address. By submitting this information to us, you can help make sure that all the websites listed in our search engine is always up to date. Please contact us to let us know about the dead link.

Concerns About Information on AdvisorCentre

1. How do I contact a site's webmaster?

   Usually when you visit a website, you will find a link at the bottom of each page through which you can contact the website's webmaster. Keep in mind that every website you visit will be different and as such, the method of contacting the website's webmaster will also differ. If you would like to contact the AdvisorCentre webmaster, please use our contact us form and we would be happy to provide you with the information you need.

2. How do I contact a financial advisor through their website?

   There are several ways to contact the financial advisor. First, you're likely to find a "Contact us" link or email address for the advisor on their website. If you visit the advisor's site and still can't find the contact information, please contact us with your request and we would be happy to try and assist you.

Information for Financial Advisors

1. Is AdvisorCentre beneficial to me as an advisor?

   AdvisorCentre is a search engine designed to provide financial advisor search and referral service to help website visitors find the best financial advisors for their unique needs. Our system is simple to use, objective and transparent. It only takes a few minutes for a website visitor to use the AdvisorCentre service to locate the ideal advisor to suit their specific needs and circumstance.
   
   By registering on AdvisorCentre enables you to harness the power of the Internet and gain access to a highly targeted yet nationwide pool of potential clients who are specifically seeking your financial expertise.

2. I'd like to be listed on AdvisorCentre. How do I register?

   We have endevoured to make advisor registration for a very simple process. There is no cost to register to be listed on AdvisorCentre's search engine, yet to take full advantage of the services offered, you will have to choose a service package.

3. What if I'm NOT a Canadian Financial Advisor?

   Currently, AdvisorCentre is only offered to website visitors in Canada. All of the advisors listed in our search engine are Canadian and only provide services in Canada. In the near future, we plan to offer our search engine services to website visitors searching for financial advisors in other countries.
   
   If you are a financial advisor working outside of Canada, and you would like to be listed on AdvisorCentre, please use our notification form to let us know. Once AdvisorCentre is available in your country, we will provide you with priority listing on our search engine.