Manage existing GOV.UK content
Find relevant content
You can do a content audit to find out what content:
- is tagged to your organisation
- covers topics related to your own work
Use Govsearch to search for content that:
- is tagged to organisations and topics
- has specific words or links in it
Govsearch will not show content that’s published using non-GOV.UK tools, including:
- blog sites
- campaign sites
- service domains
- some ‘mainstream’ smart answers that are published using Github, like ‘Check benefits and financial support you can get’
Ask the Government Digital Service (GDS) for help if you would like to search this other content.
If you’re only interested in Whitehall Publisher
You can use the Whitehall Publisher search tool to look through content on Whitehall Publisher.
This will give you details you cannot get through Govsearch, such as:
- when the content was last updated
- whether the content is overdue for a review, based on the review date that someone set when they last updated the content
If you have editor permissions, you can export the results of the search to a CSV file. Once you’ve chosen the fields for your search, select the ‘Export as CSV’ link at the bottom of the list of documents on the right hand side. You’ll then be taken to a screen asking you to confirm the export.
The CSV file will be emailed to you within a few minutes. Larger files may take longer to generate. The file is sent as an email so generating reports does not overload the publishing system.
The CSV file contains a list of content in the following fields:
- public and admin URLs
- title
- lead organisation
- supporting organisation
- first published date
- first published on GOV.UK date
- which editor published the document
- when the document was last updated
- content type and sub-type
- state (draft, submitted, scheduled, published, force published etc)
- attachments
- specialist sectors
- collections
This can help you audit your content. For example, you could use it to find out which content has not been updated recently.
Check your content is working for users
Monitor your content regularly to check if it’s useful for users and they can find it.
You can use the guidance on tools and resources to help track this.
You might decide to:
- make changes to the content
- retire the content because it’s outdated
Make changes to your content
You might want to make changes to:
- fix issues, like broken links, typos or factual errors
- update information
- improve the content, based on issues you’ve identified by checking your content is working for users
- make users aware of future changes to a policy – read our guidance on how to help users prepare for change
Your organisation will usually need to be tagged to a page to make changes to it.
If the page is also tagged to other organisations, you should contact their content teams. You can decide together how to work on the changes.
If the page is tagged to other organisations and not yours, contact their contact teams and ask them to work on the changes.
Ask GDS for help if you need contact information for other content teams.
If your content is on a ‘mainstream’ page
Mainstream pages will not have ‘government’ or ‘guidance’ in the URL. They are maintained by the content team at GDS, with changes usually based on tickets raised by the organisations tagged to the page.
You will not be able to see which organisations are tagged to a mainstream page, but you can ask GDS to make changes if you think it should be tagged to your organisation.
If your organisation is not tagged, they can direct you to the tagged organisations’ content teams. You can ask them to raise a ticket.
Ask GDS for if you want to change mainstream content.
If your content is on any other type of page
Your content team can update the content without GDS help. Read our guidance on how to update content on GOV.UK.
You will not be able to update content if it’s in ‘history mode’. If it’s in history mode, you’ll see a banner explaining that the content was published under a previous government.
If you want to update content in history mode, ask GDS for help.