Basic Search Function Tutorial

[Rick]

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

[B&T]

Nice post Rick!


If I am having trouble locating something using the board search, I sometimes enlist the help of my good friend Google:

Example for Google search of this forum:

toilet repair site:keystonerv.org

[Rick]

Good trick to know B&T!

FYI - Those of you following this, it may be me, but I can't remove the url tag (link) from this post without removing one of the w's from www so I've changed it to xww. B&T's Google search phrase is - - toilet repair site:xww.keystonerv.org

I did a quick test regarding the no quotes vs "quotes" using Google. Looks like the same rules apply. No quotes returns 17 pages of results, using "quotes" ("toilet repair" site:xww.keystonerv.org) returns 8 posts with the message "In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 8 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included" and you end up with only 2 pages of results. I think Google separates the wheat from the chaff better, as doing searches is their business. Even though no quotes are used, Google's top results are more specific in their ranking towards toilet repair, while pushing the less relevant posts to the bottom. When doing a toilet repair (no quote) search, this site may list a post about an electrical problem at the top because some person last week wrote "...because of this I have to repair all my electrical wiring. Wait, now I have to go to the toilet...". One reason it comes up at the top is that those results are ranked by date (newest on top by default). Another reason to use the "Advanced Search" on this site.

Hope others chime in with their suggestions.

Rick

[B&T]

If interested, A complete list of the Google search operators:

https://support.google.com/websearch...r/136861?hl=en

[Festus2]

Rick -
Thanks for the tutorial on how members can more effectively use the forum's Search function. In addition to not knowing how to use this feature to begin with, there are a number of things a member can do to take an advantage of the Search feature and what it can offer.
First, it requires practice in order to become familiar with it. If you seldom or rarely use it - for whatever reasons - it is not of much use at all. It's easy to say, "It's too hard," or "It takes too much time and effort. I'll just ask the members. Someone will tell me what I want to know." It might be that it involves too much time and effort so folks don't bother searching. Like any tool, it requires practice in order to learn how to use it properly.

Secondly, there are some members who probably are not aware that we have a Search function so they simply ask for answers instead of searching first.

There are a few things that our members can do to make our Search feature function more smoothly and provide the answers to what you are looking for a bit faster and less complicated. Some of these include:
1) Try to keep your posts on topic. If the topic keeps changing within a thread, it makes searching more difficult. Hijacking someone's thread is, of course, a forum "no-no". If you want to talk about your issue or change topics from the OP's , start another thread.

2) Avoid double posting. Almost everyone avoids doing this but sometimes newer members think that they will get more exposure and faster answers if they post their
question in two or more areas. Duplicate posts will be deleted by the Moderators.

3) Try to post a question or response in the most appropriate category. At times, members who happen to have a travel trailer will post everything in the Travel Trailer section even if it is about roof cleaning or if they have question about hooking up their TV to satellite. These items are better placed in Repairs & Maintenance and the Technical Corner of the forum. The fact that you have a Trailer really doesn't warrant submitting every post, regardless of topic, in this section.

It would make searching easier for members if posts were, as much as possible, submitted in the most appropriate section of the forum.

I realize that some members may be "put off" by reading someone telling them to use the Search function but learning how to use it can save everyone a lot of time - including those asking the question. It also reduces the need for having to repeat the same answer over and over to a question that has been asked over and over again.

Again, thanks for taking the time and effort to suggest ways on making using the forum easier.