# Search tips? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [August 11, 2001, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/search-tips/75834 "2001-08-11T19:32:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Podkayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Podkayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Podkayne)\ **Post date:** [August 11, 2001, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/search-tips/75834/1 "2001-08-11T19:32:11Z")
Okay, why the hell can I never find anything with the search feature? Google is my loyal slave. Lycos is my grovels at my feet. Alta Vista peels grapes and feeds them to me one-by-one. People from all over the department come to me when they need to find obscure information on the web, and I seldom send away a querant unsatisfied. But whenever I try to used the SDMB Search feature, either I get no matching entries, or a huge long list of utterly random threads. Honestly! I open these threads, and they _do not even contain the words I searched for._ What’s wrong with me? Anybody have any extremely clever search tips? Basic pointers? A clue? A clue! My kingdom for a _clue_! ---
**Author:** ![TubaDiva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tubadiva/32/507_2.png) [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2001, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/search-tips/75834/2 "2001-08-12T03:27:44Z")
The biggest tip is this: You have to search each forum individually, except when you use the “search for all posts by this member” function. Otherwise, it defaults to “About This Message Board” every time you search, as that’s the first forum in the list. your humble TubaDiva Administrator ---
**Author:** ![Podkayne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/edb3f5/32.png) [@Podkayne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Podkayne)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2001, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/search-tips/75834/3 "2001-08-12T14:15:40Z")
Fine advice for a newbie, but I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck! 🙂 [Old woman voice/]I remember the good old days when you could search _all_ the forums in one fell swoop! And I still couldn’t find diddly![/OWV]