Searching through one thread only

Discussion in 'Feedback' started by cnms2, Feb 26, 2006.

  1. cnms2

    cnms2

    Is it possible to search through one thread only? If not, would you please add this feature?
     
  2. cnms2

    cnms2

    No can do? Don't care?
     
  3. You can use the following handy technique to perform such a search, among many other search types.

    Let's say, you want to find every occurrence of the word "oil" in the USD/CAD thread under "Forex Trading" forum.

    Go to Google (or use the Google toolbar in your browser, if you have it), then click on "Advanced Search":

    http://www.google.com/advanced_search

    Enter your search term(s) in one or more of the first 4 boxes, as usual. In addition -- here's the trick -- enter, or copy & paste, the thread # in the first box, labeled "with all of the words". In this case, it's 56333. Finally, enter "elitetrader.com" (w/out quotes, of course) in the Domain box. (Next time, with the right browser "forms" settings, as soon as you type "e" or simply double-click in the Domain box, it'll give you a drop-down menu with "elitetrader.com" as a choice.) You'll end up with this search command:

    http://www.google.com/search?as_q=o...itesearch=elitetrader.com&as_rights=&safe=off

    (Note that some of your Google search defaults could differ from mine; you can always adjust those under Preferences, or click on "Advanced Search" at the top of that screen to edit just the current search.)

    Result: all 9 occurrences of the word "oil" in that thread are displayed.

    This method works well on ET or any other message board. In fact, it's a lot more powerful than ET's own built-in search, even if you are NOT interested in just one thread. That's because, unlike ET, you can bring to bear the full range of Google Advanced Search parameters, wild cards and logical operators on anything of interest... single or multiple, full or partial words, numbers, phrases, poster's name, dates, file types, thread #s, and so on.
     
  4. cnms2

    cnms2

    This is a nice "work-around" ET's poor search feature. Thanks God (?) for Google! I wonder what's the delay from the posting of a new message until Google finds it. I'll try it. Thanks late_apex. :)
     
  5. cnms2

    cnms2

    It found only the first post, of 2/26, and not yet the second one, of 2/28.
     
  6. Baron

    Baron Administrator

    I think our search could certainly be better but it's a little unfair to compare our built-in search feature with a multi-billion dollar company like Google which uses 100,000 servers networked together to index and generate search results.
     
  7. cnms2

    cnms2

    I guess it wouldn't take much to do a few simple upgrades to help your users. Maybe I'm wrong.

    Anyway, I was surprised when I got no reply to my post.
     
  8. Baron

    Baron Administrator

    Yeah, I totally overlooked the thread initially. Sorry about that.

    But getting back to the topic, one way to search a thread for now is to click on the "print icon" to get the full thread on a single page and then hit ctrl-f to use your browser's built-in find utility.
     
  9. cnms2

    cnms2

    Thank you! This is a great solution! I tried it even on a really long thread, Spydertrader's journal.
     
  10. A simple yet elegant solution, whenever you already know the thread you want... don't know how I forgot about that one. Thanks, Baron.
     
    #10     Mar 4, 2006