How to Effectively Search for Helpline Prior Discussions of Your Topic

thanks Kent, this is a fantastic tip!

Maybe someone could forward this suggestion to the "Rick Steve's Web Developers"...

Excellent, Kent and Bee! Thank you.

You can also do a search like this in google via the 'normal' google search as well.

In the google search bar, type the following:

{your search criteria} site:www.ricksteves.com

This filters all results to make sure they came from www.ricksteves.com. That way you don't have to go into the advanced search area and save yourself 1.7 seconds per day.

More google search tips

Hey, this is great! Thanks, Bee and Kent!

Kent-you posted this info a while ago and it changed my life. Up until then, I had no luck finding info on this web site. I think you need to post this monthly to help all of us who are less computer savy than you are. Bless you.

Great job! Just tried it and works as advertised!

Thanks Kent and Bee! I missed this post the first time, so I really appreciate the "bump up".

Thanks Kent, it works great! I found an old post I'd been searching for for a long time - all in about 10 seconds!!

That is AWESOME! Thank you!

Honestly though, it is pretty bad when a website is so poorly constructed, that you have to go to Google first to find things on the website.

Any news yet of an update, repairs or a renovation?

Bee of Sacramento taught me how to use Google Advanced Search to efficiently find prior posts that you won't find using the Helpline built-in search box (upper right corner). Bee sent this to me today & suggested I post it. I'm happy to do so but want to emphasize that this is her work:Those more comfortable with Yahoo can use it, instead of Google, to workaround the inefficient Helpline search box. Go to Yahoo's advanced search option and click on Options to the right of Yahoo's search box. As you become familiar with this method of searching, note how the words you type in the advanced search boxes arrange themselves in the general search box at the top of the page. Eventually you'll be able to type your advanced search directly into the regular search box of any search engine.You can drill down (search within results) by adding/subtracting specific words or phrases one-at-a-time at the end of the text in the search box.Click on Google's Advanced Search Tips and their other hyper-text clickables on the Advanced Search Page. Google teaches you what to type. You'll learn how to make your searches more sophisticated, omitting certain words, or searching for pages which are new in the past month or week, but a search for what's new in the past 24 hours won't always be complete, depends on how recently the search engine has crawled the site.And note that a search engine won't select text spelled differently from what you type in your search. Example: think about the various ways the word "accommodation" is spelled by posters on this site. If you want to conduct a thorough search, you'd probably type "accommodation OR acommodation OR accomodation OR acomodation" to cover some frequent spelling variations. I just ran a Google search of this site for "accommodation" that yielded 1,390 results. Then I ran a search for "accommodation OR acommodation". This yielded 2,790 results.

Kent - This was a very good suggestion and I know it will help.

But there's one downside: Some people find older posts on the subject they're interested in - which is great. But then they decide to answer months old posts! Thereby popping the topic back to the top and starting a new discussion when the OP has long left.

PLEASE DON'T WAKE THE ZOMBIES!

Replying to long dead topics just confuses things around here.

But, thanks for this post, Kent. I just hope I don't start reading it again in 2011 ;).

I found I have a zombie of my own wandering the "To the Boot" board - my Malpensa thread.

Bumping.

This might confuse people, but perhaps retitling the thread "How to Search the Helpline" which is what I looked for when I was trying to find it a month or two ago?

Or the webmaster could make it a sticky at the top of the board, as has been suggested previously...

Bumping and thank you Kent-
I was just about to post a question regarding couchsurfing and instead googled it. I got all the info I needed and didn't have to bother people with another topic that's probably been beaten to death.

Bringing it to the top again.

Does RS's site no longer search Helpline topics? I got Graffiti Wall, but no hits on the Helpline itself even though I searched for the exact thread title, which used to do the trick.

I noticed on RS home page that a new software developer is being recruited.

Google has new search options today. Perform a Google search on the Rick Steves site, and when the results page appears, click on the "show options" link at the top left of the page. Additional search options appear in a menu on the left. Try them out! There are many online news articles today about how to use the new options. You can find articles on Google News.

Thanks to Bee's heads up, we now have an even better way to search the Helpline for prior discussions than ever before. I've just now updated the original post to include instructions for taking advantage of Google's new search options, added today by Google.