Searching the forums

[mstrpo]

Hi All,

I like to think that I'm pretty Internet savvy and can effectively use search engines but I can't figure out the search engine on this site. How do you search for a phrase? I see that I can search for specific words that must be included but this isn't too helpful when the words are pretty general. For example, I want to look for discussions that relate to the south Puget Sound. If I search for 'south AND puget AND sound', the results include almost every post on the site!

I am humbled and ready to be educated by the search wizards of this site.

Thanks!

[TyBoo]

The resident search feature is rather quirky as you discovered but you might have better luck using the Google search at the top left of the screen beneath the logo and menu bar.

Searching it using "south puget sound" (with quotes) gives you ten hits on the CB site using the exact phrase.

[NORO LIM]

If you are not familiar with it already, you might try Google Advanced Search. It can be pretty handy:

https://www.google.com/advanced_search


It has lines for employing Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT or AND NOT) and for searching or excluding exact quotes. It also allows you to limit your search to a particular domain (e.g., www.c-brats.com), which achieves the same narrowing of you search as using the on-site box as Mike described. Google Advanced Search, however, allows you to do this kind of searching generally on the internet. With it you can also search just certain kinds of domains (e.g. com, gov, edu, org). This last feature is particularly useful if you want to increase your chances of learning something while decreasing your chances of the top fifty search hits being ads. It is a very useful tool, but as with all things Google-ish, I never trust it completely - I use Duck Duck Go as much as I can.

[mstrpo]

Thank you both! This is exactly what I was looking for. I somehow had a blind eye for the very prominent 'Enhanced by Google' search at the top of most every page...