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How to search the forum for numbers using Google

Posted: Fri Aug 26, 2011 8:00 pm
by Bruce Fenstermacher
The phpBB Forum Software we use is pretty good but one of it weaker points is it's search engine. For one you can not search for a number using the built in search engine. Searching for 170 will not find anything. There is a work around. Use Google to search our forum.

Go to a Google search page and enter: 170 site:http://www.cessna170.org/forums/

Any words or combination of words in front of the word site is what Google searches for and it searches only at the address after the word site.

If you search for 170 you will find TIC170A, 170, 170B, 170000 and so forth. If you put 170 in quotes "170" you will only find links with the word (or number) 170.

By default Google returns results with all words in a search. So searching for the words170 and fuel would find results with any word or phrase with both of those words. For example 170 and fuel, 170B and fuel, 170000 and fueling.

If you want to find 170 OR fuel the type that exactly and you will find results for 170, 170B, 170000 or any with fuel. OR must be in Capital letters.
If you want just 170 not 170B and no result with fuel you would type +170 -fuel and you will get a result of only those with 170 that don't mention fuel. Using the plus sign or putting the word in quotes works the same as far as I can tell.

Here is a Google Help Page that explains the Google search line including Boolean Operators which can be used to limit the search result:
http://www.google.com/support/websearch ... 36861&rd=1

It's fun, try it.