How to do a decent search?

[Onaflag]

A while back, a friend showed me how to do a decent search of 2+2 using Google and some cool parameters like filtering out the RE: to get more useful results.

I think I remember a reference page somewhere showing how to do an intelligent search. Anybody have a bookmark or something to help get more accurate results when searching?

Thanks.

Onaflag...........

[Pov]

Contrary to popular opinion, the search function within the board works just fine and is actually more powerful than using Google in some ways since it will let you filter based upon things like forum and username. If you want to search for something like say . . . searching with Google and you don't want to see replies then just use:

-"re:" +google +search

Then make sure you have it set to search both the subject and the body, set the forums you want to search and how far back you're willing to look and tada.

Of course this particular search is doomed to fail because you'll get so many "I searched Google for xyz and couldn't find it" posts, but that will be true of any search method.

However, Google has some advantages in ranking the search result so I sometimes use it instead or as a second try. The keyword you're probably looking for is "site" like this:

site:forumserver.twoplustwo.com +google +search


Hope this helps.

[AKQJ10]

Ah.... that's what I've been missing. I'll have to retry some searches that have failed miserably now that I know the plus signs are pretty much mandatory for multiterm searches.

Philosophically I think the Google way, defaulting to AND instead of OR (or "even if neither" [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] ) is much better, but I'm willing to stifle that religious war because I'm so happy to know the right way to do it on 2+2.

[SheridanCat]

AngryCola did wrote up a detailed description of this for the Beginner's FAQ. You'll find it on the Poker Wiki here.

Regards,

T