# Narrowing a search?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/narrowing-a-search/290866>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [February 19, 2005, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/narrowing-a-search/290866 "2005-02-19T06:45:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2005, 6:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/narrowing-a-search/290866/1 "2005-02-19T06:45:17Z")

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In general, I don’t have very good results searching. I was looking for a thread I’d posted in which I knew had “hair” in the title–okay, it was about whether you can make hair grow faster–and none of the results included that thread. Okay, so it wasn’t one of the more important threads and it was probably deleted as irrelevant, or something.

But that’s only one example.

Tonight I was looking for a thread about movies scenes that aren’t in movies but you wish they were. I put “movies” and “scenes” and told it to search thread titles only.

I got:

Some threads that didn’t have either word in the title

Some threads that had only the word “scene”

And going back to before the date I joined, I didn’t find the thread I was specifically looking for.

Basically, I have NEVER found a particular thread, either because I can’t remember the key word, or because the key word turns up way too many.

Any hints on how to improve my searching, so as not to waste the hamsters’ time? Alternatively, if someone could find that thread about movie scenes you’d like to see . . .

TIA

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**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2005, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/narrowing-a-search/290866/2 "2005-02-19T06:46:44Z")

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PS to above: in the movie-scene example I was searching only in Cafe Society. Is that a mistake?

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**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\
**Post date:** [February 19, 2005, 12:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/narrowing-a-search/290866/3 "2005-02-19T12:22:58Z")

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[http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=197972&highlight=hair](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=197972&highlight=hair)

Is that the “hair” thread? I found it by typing “key word” =hair, and “post made by”=your name. Don’t specify a forum. IT was in IMHO.

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**Author:** ![Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hilarity_n.suze/32/6223_2.png) [@Hilarity\_N.Suze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hilarity_N.Suze)\
**Post date:** [March 14, 2005, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/narrowing-a-search/290866/4 "2005-03-14T04:46:58Z")

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> [@samclem](#):
>
> [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=197972&highlight=hair](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=197972&highlight=hair)
> 
> Is that the “hair” thread? I found it by typing “key word” =hair, and “post made by”=your name. Don’t specify a forum. IT was in IMHO.

Although it is a hair thread, it is not the hair thread.

But thanks, anyway.