Searching--This Is How I Do It

[hookbill]

Use the search! Use the search! Yeah, you see it all the time and you think, yeah, right, if it worked I would. And then there are plenty of those who don't bother to try.

Well, I'm going to tell you how I successfully search the Forum. I use this for answering questions on how to do things that I know have been discussed before but at my age have a hard time retaining the details.

The secret is I don't use the search here in the forum. I use Google. And this is how I do it.

Let's say I want to get an answer on how to do a 3 way call on the droid. In Goggle I type Conference Call Droid.

When Google comes up almost always within the first 5-10 answers is something from the Droid Forums. And if you look closely it will say "more from Droid Forums." Click on that and you can see every thread that has a post on the subject you are looking for. Works for me all the time.

Give it a try sometime before you post. See if you can't find your answer without opening a thread. I'm not trying to discourage anybody from posting, I'm just sharing something I do that not everybody may know about.

 

[ShowTime]

Nice work Hook. This thread will be great to reference people to once they've ignored it, not searched for it, and started a new thread asking how best to search/find answers to their questions.

 

[jayb]

Thanks HOOK...........That is what I have to do to find anything in here. :icon_ banana:

I tried the search feature built in to the forum but always have the " not found " reply.

 

[Mateles]

You can specify the site you want to search at Google using site:

2.1 ota site:droidforums.net

Or Google search is an option when you click search in the forum.

 

[miss chris]

Thank you!!! This will help so much!

 

[mth04]

You can specify the site you want to search at Google using site:

2.1 ota site:droidforums.net

Or Google search is an option when you click search in the forum.

Yep you can. Sometimes if you're working on too big a phrase that may be an issue. But I've done it that way too.

 

[Mojo]

And something that will help you search Google even better is to put what ever you search for in "" and specify the web site. Like this...

Let me google that for you

 

[Sam]

i think the trick is getting people to actually search... i'm not making excuses, but this is a common problem on all forums, people just don't do it.

having said that, this is a great strategy because the forum search engine has failed me on a few occasions before too, and i have used google to find what i was after.. thanks hook!

 

[Mateles]

i think the trick is getting people to actually search... i'm not making excuses, but this is a common problem on all forums, people just don't do it.

having said that, this is a great strategy because the forum search engine has failed me on a few occasions before too, and i have used google to find what i was after.. thanks hook!

When I put in a feature request for Locale, it forced me to search before I was able to make the new request. It'd be nice if the forum could enforce something like that (at least for new threads).

 

[huskur]

The only thing bad about "searches" is the relativity of the answer you looking for and how it relates to your needs. Alot of times you search and come up with a thousand posts that mean absolutely nothing about what your are searching for and have to spend an hour to figure out how to "forward a text message to groups" for example.

I do use search often and often get not what i am looking for (easily).

 

[J*Bishop]

the way i find things here is using the Advanced search and searching by thread title.

 

[hookbill]

The only thing bad about "searches" is the relativity of the answer you looking for and how it relates to your needs. Alot of times you search and come up with a thousand posts that mean absolutely nothing about what your are searching for and have to spend an hour to figure out how to "forward a text message to groups" for example.

I do use search often and often get not what i am looking for (easily).

If you search the way I describe in my OP I can almost guarantee you will find an answer. I really rely on this search to make me appear half way intelligent.:redface: And it does work.

 

[Mojo]

The only thing bad about "searches" is the relativity of the answer you looking for and how it relates to your needs. Alot of times you search and come up with a thousand posts that mean absolutely nothing about what your are searching for and have to spend an hour to figure out how to "forward a text message to groups" for example.

I do use search often and often get not what i am looking for (easily).

See that's the thing about using google though... if used right it can narrow searchs down to a single thread. Check out this example

Let me google that for you

By entering search critera in properly I can narrow my results to one thread, by a single phrase I said in a thread with google.

 

[warrior21]

The only thing bad about "searches" is the relativity of the answer you looking for and how it relates to your needs. Alot of times you search and come up with a thousand posts that mean absolutely nothing about what your are searching for and have to spend an hour to figure out how to "forward a text message to groups" for example.

I do use search often and often get not what i am looking for (easily).

If you search the way I describe in my OP I can almost guarantee you will find an answer. I really rely on this search to make me appear half way intelligent.:redface: And it does work.

If you can almost guarantee every question you want to ask will be answered by the search function, why would anyone ask any questions at all? I mean I completely understand that so many questions are asked and you can tell they didn't even attempt a search but I have come across situations where I didn't get a definite answer to my question. I'm not saying it has happened often but this is still a forum.

 

[hookbill]

The only thing bad about "searches" is the relativity of the answer you looking for and how it relates to your needs. Alot of times you search and come up with a thousand posts that mean absolutely nothing about what your are searching for and have to spend an hour to figure out how to "forward a text message to groups" for example.

I do use search often and often get not what i am looking for (easily).

If you search the way I describe in my OP I can almost guarantee you will find an answer. I really rely on this search to make me appear half way intelligent.:redface: And it does work.

If you can almost guarantee every question you want to ask will be answered by the search function, why would anyone ask any questions at all? I mean I completely understand that so many questions are asked and you can tell they didn't even attempt a search but I have come across situations where I didn't get a definite answer to my question. I'm not saying it has happened often but this is still a forum.

Well the answer to that is pretty simple. There are two of them. The first is they don't know how to use the search method that I described in my OP, and the second is that people don't bother to search before they post.