Rick
06-25-2014, 08:21 AM
I've been on forum for less than 2 years now, and it's been a great help. Every once in a while a question is asked by someone and part of the answer will be "Use the Search", "The search function is your friend" or some variation of this. While I agree, many people don't know how to use the "Search" efficiently. I thought I'd add this to help those people out. There's more ways to use the search function to narrow your results, but I'm not covering them here.
1. Be logged in - that way you don't have to enter the verification code required of those not logged in. I don't know how many times I've entered the wrong code when I did a search when not logged in and had to re-type it multiple times.
2. Check your spelling - incorrectly spelled or misused words will bring wrong or no results.
3. Search using quotation marks - This will narrow your search to whatever is within the double quotation marks. Let's say you need to do a search for toilet repair. Searching on "toilet repair" (using the quotation marks) will return only the entire consecutive phrase, in the order you typed the words. Your search for that phrase will only be 2 returns because whoever wrote those posts had the words toilet repair next to each other and in that order. Problem is, the person who has the answer to your question may have written in their post something like "...the toilet gasket repair will fix your problem". Because the word gasket was placed between your search words, this type of search won't find it.
4. Search without quotation marks - Searching without quote marks on toilet repair will return any combination of those two words (toilet and repair). You type those words into the search box and you get 40 results. Now your answer will be found within those returns. Unfortunately, a lot of those results have nothing to do with toilet repair so you have to wade through all the results to find your answer.
5. Use variations of your search words - Instead of toilet repair, you can try fix, commode, replacement, adjustment, etc.
Hope this helps.
Rick
1. Be logged in - that way you don't have to enter the verification code required of those not logged in. I don't know how many times I've entered the wrong code when I did a search when not logged in and had to re-type it multiple times.
2. Check your spelling - incorrectly spelled or misused words will bring wrong or no results.
3. Search using quotation marks - This will narrow your search to whatever is within the double quotation marks. Let's say you need to do a search for toilet repair. Searching on "toilet repair" (using the quotation marks) will return only the entire consecutive phrase, in the order you typed the words. Your search for that phrase will only be 2 returns because whoever wrote those posts had the words toilet repair next to each other and in that order. Problem is, the person who has the answer to your question may have written in their post something like "...the toilet gasket repair will fix your problem". Because the word gasket was placed between your search words, this type of search won't find it.
4. Search without quotation marks - Searching without quote marks on toilet repair will return any combination of those two words (toilet and repair). You type those words into the search box and you get 40 results. Now your answer will be found within those returns. Unfortunately, a lot of those results have nothing to do with toilet repair so you have to wade through all the results to find your answer.
5. Use variations of your search words - Instead of toilet repair, you can try fix, commode, replacement, adjustment, etc.
Hope this helps.
Rick