It doesn't work 100%, but if you include the name of the forum it should help narrow down the results, so you could search for something like:

LAX "Mileage Run Deals"

in the example you mention. Thanks,

Tim - that works, thank you.
Also, using the 3 letter code + wildcard (ie LAX*) works albeit you'll get lots of other extraneous results. I wanted to at least restrict the search to the mileage run deal forum.

The search term you specified (new) is under the minimum word length (4) and therefore will not be found. Please make this term longer.
If this term contains a wildcard, please make this term more specific.


When i search for, ex SEARCH i get results.

When i try something like: HILTON NEW YORK I cannot get a result. only the message listet above

How to search for things like this?

As one of the moderators of the Hilton forum, I can answer that for you.

Simply search for York but choose Search Titles Only.

You will find the threads for Hilton New York. This is what I do all the time in the Hilton forum for threads pertaining to New York.

Very helpful, Thanks

It is extremely easy to limit a search to a specific forum (such as Mileage Run Deals). Just use the "Search this forum" feature rather than the "Search" feature. (And then click on "Advanced," and go from there, if you want to use the advanced features such as Titles-Only, etc.). @:-)

Not that you would need to in this case, but FT search will work with Hilton "New York" as the search terms.

Since the announcement is now gone I'm pasting my reply about the Beta Search:

It was in the announcements above the Technical Issues Forum, but that's now gone.

I posted this a while ago in Three-Letter Search Not Working! thread:


EDIT: Three letter search (such as airport codes) can be used as search term(s) in the Beta Search.

...as well as two-letter and one-letter searches, which I still have to test.

The three-letter search, which I just tested, has improved tremendously in terms of both performance and accuracy. There are still some features that the beta search engine lacks when compared to the traditional search engine, but in some ways the traditional search engine does not compare to the latest version of the beta search engine. If those missing features were added to the beta search engine, as well as any new suggested features, the beta search engine will then be the most powerful, useful and usable search engine that FlyerTalk has ever had.

Please see the IB Search Beta Update thread for more details.

If and when the beta search engine is not in its test phases anymore, I intend to update this thread with how to use that search engine.

Thanks for the update and the link, I hadn't gotten to the tech. forum yet. My usual order is subscribed threads, NW WP, tech, MR disc., MR deals and more if I have time.

I don't know why they removed the announcement about the beta, I have a feeling a lot of newer users don't even know it exists. I just added it here since it was a sticky where someone with a search problem should start. I found out the announcement was gone when I wanted to point a long-time user to it in Search Options - New Beta Option after they combined their advanced search into both beta and advanced search forms and got strange results.

I was sure you'd update this thread when the beta search becomes the FT search. It's nice to see they've made a lot of progress.

The beta search engines were virtually worthless to me before the current version of the beta search engine...

...and I am happy to report that searching two-letter terms works just as accurately and just as quickly as searching three-letter terms on FlyerTalk!

Well, I can report that a one letter/number search can provide great results using the new beta search.

I searched NW WP Forum for 2% (as it turns out it only searches for the 2 in this case) and found three threads on the "2% club" without even adding club to the search terms. Results were posted in 2% - can I get a straight answer ? in answer to a user who said it wasn't possible to search for 2%.

I wondered why I was having trouble finding things recently. On closer inspection I found that at some point I must have reset my search fields, which now default to Sort Results By Relevancy. :(

Although obvious in hindsight, until I looked more closely, I had assumed that Search was broken.

Could you reset the default back to Last Posting Date (also for the IB Beta Search), as in FT recency usually means relevancy!

My Search default is still set to Last Posting Date in the classic version of the FlyerTalk search engine, while it is set to Relevance in the Internet Brands beta search engine.

I assume that if you use the reset button, the original search will now default to Relevance?