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Old Jan 25, 2006 | 7:19 am
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KathyWdrf
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Originally Posted by Dovster
There is a lot of criticism of people who start threads without doing searches but we have to also be able to admit the truth: The search function is of very limited help.

Let's say I want to find out if Delta offers a bonus for bringing in new SkyMiles benefits.

Yes, I will restrict my search to the Delta Forum, but what keyword do I seek?
"SkyMiles", "bonus", "new", or "members" will all get the 500 hits which is the maximum shown. (And if there was no maximum there would be many thousands of hits for all of these words.)

Until a search offering the possibility of seeking out a combination of words is possible, we have to expect new threads to be started on old topics.
Dov, hate to break it to you, but FT Search does NOT restrict you to one keyword! @:-)

Also, there are options on the Search function that will help limit the number of hits to something manageable.

For example, you can do a search on "titles only." That is usually what I use.

Or you can limit the date range, for example, to a certain number of days or months ago, if you want to find recent threads and not dredge up too many ancient ones.

You can also search for a particular poster's threads. And so on.

And you can combine these criteria as well.

Of course, you have to use Advanced Search to use these options, but IMO Advanced is the only way to search on FT. @:-)
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