Help me with the Search Feature

[WhaddaDeal006]

Can you please give me some tips on how to better use the search feature? I was posting several new freebies that I found, and I searched to see if they were already posted previously. Several had been, so I did not post (except the one in the business section I noted from 2001).

But the ones I did post, I could not find any links....but now I see a couple have been merged with previous posts. Is there a trick to performing a search to find if it has been posted before? I tried to search part or all of the product/company name and also the main/domain URL.

Thanks!

[linkmosaic]

I AM NOT A MODERATOR BUT THIS IS WHAT I FOUND HELPED ME:

1) search in the advance search
2) make sure you include as far back as you need
3) try your search in many way, and include title only and subject included.
4) if it is for stores try abbreviations and full name, with .com and without. tc..

It take a couple of searches to be sure...

Good Luck

[katlnhats]

Right, you are!

Use the advanced search. That's a mistake I was making for awhile when I first did the searches.
Sometimes, (most-times) the less words you use in the search, the more things will come up in the search - for freebies, check off or highlight in the search box, Found A Freebie - check it, as it may check every single forum - did that too, and will come up with a bunch of non-related things.

I think the key is using the advanced search, even if you do it a couple times, it works a lot better than the regular search, and reword your search if needed.

Kat with thanks for the help to linkmosaic

[verwon]

Yes, use the least amount of words possible, for instance instead of searching for Purina Dog Food Sample, try just Purina Dog, this will bring up more accurate results. If you use the words food and sample, it is going to bring up every single post with those words in it, even unrelated to purina dog food, and make it harder to get accurate results.

If you look in the freebie forum you will see the words such as free and sample, as well as others, are used ALL the time, so if you include those in your search, you can forget getting accurate results. For a search for Dove Definity sample, just use DOVE DEFINITY in the search box.

Second, just the everyone else said, use the advanced search, not just the basic search box, the basic search box checks all of the DOD forums, so it will pull up any post that had any of those words in it, anywhere in any forum. Restrict the search to the freebie forum.

When I know something is a duplicate post, it never takes me more than a few seconds to find the original post and merge them. I open the advance search, type in the prominent info like Dove Definity, then click to search just the freebie forum, I leave all the rest on default.

[WhaddaDeal006]

Thank you both for the info.....I'll test it more on my next posts and see how it works.

[verwon]

Welcome, if you have any other problems or questions, feel free to post, or send me a pm!