# How do I search for a two word subject? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [January 18, 2001, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-search-for-a-two-word-subject/50644 "2001-01-18T05:35:14Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![justwannano](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7ab992/32.png) [@justwannano](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/justwannano)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2001, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-search-for-a-two-word-subject/50644/1 "2001-01-18T05:35:14Z")
I want to search the SDMB for coal oil. How do I search for a two word subject with two popular words? A quick netscape and google give both oil and coal but not the product coal oil. ---
**Author:** ![Coldfire](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a587f6/32.png) [@Coldfire](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Coldfire)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2001, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-search-for-a-two-word-subject/50644/2 "2001-01-18T14:50:30Z")
This goes for most search engines, and I think it works for ours too. Instead of just putting the words coal and oil in the search box, input “coal oil” (including parentheses). However, having tried that, I came up with an old thread by FreakFreely, with no mention of the term “coal oil” the word “Coalition” came closest. So, our search engine is a bit dodgy. What else is new. 😃 Maybe +coal +oil works? YES! However, that gives me over 500 hits. Ugh. +“coal oil”, then? It should at least bring up THIS thread, right? Hmmm… same FreakFreely thread again. Dammit. OK, so my short answer to date is: you can find threads with the words “coal” and “oil” by inputting ‘+coal +oil’ in the box (without parentheses). It would be great if there were a way to narrow it down to the TERM “coal oil”, of course. Any takers? ---
**Author:** ![justwannano](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7ab992/32.png) [@justwannano](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/justwannano)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2001, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-search-for-a-two-word-subject/50644/3 "2001-01-18T15:27:06Z")
Coldfire,Thanks for trying anyway. When I tried “coal oil” I got nothing. Maybe I wasn’t searching far enough back. ---
**Author:** ![zut](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zut/32/2875_2.png) [@zut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zut)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2001, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-do-i-search-for-a-two-word-subject/50644/4 "2001-01-19T13:59:20Z")
I’d like to point out that, just for fun, I typed “coal oil” into the search engine, and I _did_ get this thread (plus **FreakFreely’s** ). That confused the heck out of me for while, until I realized that **Coldfire** had included “coal oil” _with the parentheses_ in his post, and the search engine had correctly picked it up. As a further weirdness, I searched on the phrase “as an aside” and got ten hits, none of which appear to actually contain the phrase “as an aside”. Oh! On further reflection, I think the search engine is finding all the threads containing the string **"as** (with the quotation mark) AND the string **an** AND the string **aside"**. Just as **FreakFreely’s** thread was the only one to contain the string **"coal** AND the string **oil"**. Which, of course, was just what I asked it to do. **justwannano** , did you try to think of another associated term to search on? For example, if I search on **coal oil** I get 515 hits. If I search on **coal oil paint** I get 125 hits. If I search on **coal oil paint rainbow** I get 11 hits. I’m assuming that these searches are subsets of the previous search. O’ course, a phrase searching capability would be much nicer, but it seems that you might be able to narrow things down at least a little more.