# The Old Site's Search Engine Sucked. I Sure Do Miss It!
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-old-sites-search-engine-sucked-i-sure-do-miss-it/920471
**Category:** About This Message Board
**Created:** [September 13, 2020, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-old-sites-search-engine-sucked-i-sure-do-miss-it/920471 "2020-09-13T02:29:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2020, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-old-sites-search-engine-sucked-i-sure-do-miss-it/920471/1 "2020-09-13T02:29:16Z")
To find [this extant thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/ask-the-guy-who-is-pretty-good-at-sf-story-identification/462417/671) I went to the search popdown and typed “ask the guy science fiction” (no quotes). Useless irrelevant hits. Advanced Search: umm, yeah I could put my name. WTF are “tags”?? Where do I specify a string that is in the title and where instead might I specify a string that appears somewhere within the thread? Various attempts.
Gave up, went to Google. First search got me hits for “Ask the Guy who is Pretty Good at SF Story Identification”. Links were dead, though.
Copied the name of the damn thread from Google and re-searched in SDMB and this time it found it. (I had been remembering “science fiction” and it was “sf” in the thread title).
All this as preface to saying: if, in the longer arc of things, no rush and no hurry, it became possible to hook this place up with a better search engine, ideally a full-on boolean search window that would let you specify time frame, user name, forum, etc, that would be really cool and I’d appreciate it very much.
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### Author:  [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2020, 8:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-old-sites-search-engine-sucked-i-sure-do-miss-it/920471/2 "2020-09-13T08:42:48Z")
The advanced search will do it. Look more carefully at the options.
You can check ‘Matching in title only’ or put ‘in:title’ in the search string.
You can choose category (forum) from the drop down or type ‘#cafe-society’.
And there you go:
[https://boards.straightdope.com/search?expanded=true&q=in%3Atitle%20%23cafe-society%20ask%20guy%20sf](https://boards.straightdope.com/search?expanded=true&q=in%3Atitle%20%23cafe-society%20ask%20guy%20sf)
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### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2020, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-old-sites-search-engine-sucked-i-sure-do-miss-it/920471/3 "2020-09-13T18:15:17Z")
Results I should get for specifying my username + “homelessness” in the title:
[https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as\_q=homeless+AHunter3&as\_epq=&as\_oq=&as\_eq=&as\_nlo=&as\_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as\_qdr=all&as\_sitesearch=boards.straightdope.com&as\_occt=any&safe=images&as\_filetype=&tbs=](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&as_q=homeless+AHunter3&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=boards.straightdope.com&as_occt=any&safe=images&as_filetype=&tbs=)
Actually I should not get all these, since Google doesn’t let me search for words “just in the title”. But I should certainly get that first one, “We should end homelessness in America”.
Results I get in SDMB search engine:
[https://boards.straightdope.com/search?q=homelessness%20in%3Atitle%20%40AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/search?q=homelessness%20in%3Atitle%20%40AHunter3)
> [@](#):
>
> No results found.
>
> Can’t find what you’re looking for? Perhaps start a new topic?
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### Author:  [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)
#### Post date: [September 13, 2020, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-old-sites-search-engine-sucked-i-sure-do-miss-it/920471/4 "2020-09-13T19:17:45Z")
I’m glad you found it anyway…
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### Author:  [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2020, 8:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-old-sites-search-engine-sucked-i-sure-do-miss-it/920471/5 "2020-09-14T20:17:16Z")
> [@AHunter3](#):
>
> Actually I should not get all these, since Google doesn’t let me search for words “just in the title”. But I should certainly get that first one, “We should end homelessness in America”.
The problem is that it’s searching for a complete match. It’s looking for a topic with the title “We should end homelessness in America” posted by you. But you didn’t post the topic.
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### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2020, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-old-sites-search-engine-sucked-i-sure-do-miss-it/920471/6 "2020-09-14T20:47:11Z")
Yes, I realize that. But the search engine doesn’t give me the option of “search for a thread with the following text in the thread title, within which the poster AHunter3 has posted at least once”.
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### Author:  [@Manduck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Manduck)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2020, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-old-sites-search-engine-sucked-i-sure-do-miss-it/920471/7 "2020-09-14T20:53:41Z")
There is an option in advanced search to limit results to topics that “I posted in “.
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### Author:  [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)
#### Post date: [September 14, 2020, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-old-sites-search-engine-sucked-i-sure-do-miss-it/920471/8 "2020-09-14T21:38:37Z")
[ ](https://www.genderkitten.com/WS4/ah3files2/doesntwork.jpg)
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### Author:  [@EllisDee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EllisDee)
#### Post date: [September 16, 2020, 3:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-old-sites-search-engine-sucked-i-sure-do-miss-it/920471/9 "2020-09-16T15:43:40Z")
The in-thread search is no great shakes either.