Sticky Request: How to efficiently search the forum

I know some helpful people have answered posts for search help in the past. I think it would be great to compile them or create a new thread in the "Forum Software Specific Help" area for this. I don't use search often but when I do I find I have forgotten how to get it to work and seemingly get random results without finding what I need. Hopefully I am not alone and that others also have this problem, and this idea could be entertained by someone much more adept at searching than I. Thank you in advance, Ken.

I understand your frustration Ken. We frequently discuss "sticking" different threads- it only works sometimes. For some reason most visitors to the forum seen to skip over them. A recent example is the "stuck" rally vendor thread which clearly states that you need to be a vendor to post, and someone not a vendor posts in it. It's not a big deal, we usually just move it to where it ought to be.
Anyway, Kurt wrote this a while back-

No question, the search tool on this forum is very anemic. Putting in "oil pressure switch" (without the quotes) will get you every post/thread that has the words oil, pressure, OR switch in it. There is no way to limit it to just the phrase. Numerous times people have mentioned the use of the google search where you go to google and type "site:bmwmoa.org xxx" where xxx is what you want to search for. If you put quotes around xxx it will limit the results to just the phrase.

Click to expand...

We will see what we can do.
HTH, Gary

The "site:" part is unnecessary and may be omitted.

Enter forums.bmwmoa.orgs [search terms] into Google and it'll work.

I am looking for posts about the ideal handlebar upgrade for old farts still riding an R100RS. The stock bars are made for strong young backs that can lean forward all day and laugh it off later. I know I've read in the Airheads forum that K75 bars of some type or another (S, RS, RT??) really work well. They don't bash into the fairing, still leave your hands protected and you don't even need new cables. I'd love to find a used set but I don't know exactly what I'm looking for. So I try using advanced search of the Airhead (that name suits me so well these daze...) and enter K75 +bar in the keywords. Not a single find...

So I try a few other search combos and nothing. I try Google using this string which should look specifically in the airheads forum only but all I get is Flying bricks entries. It seems to be searching the whole site. "site:http://forums.forums.bmwmoa.orgdisplay.php?13-Airheads K75"

I think I need a searching seminar...

MJM -

I don't think the google search method will search just a specific forum...it will search the entire bmwmoa.org, including the MOA homepage.

I tried the google method but used "handlebars" and "r100rs" as the search terms (without the quotes)...seemed to return some hits.

For a specific forum search, you might want to try that feature on the forum. Go to the forum and use the Search This Forum up at the right. Unfortunately, using "K75" won't work as the term needs to be more than 3 characters. I used "K75S" (again no quotes) and got quite a few threads, and after paging down a bit, found a thread whose title was "K75 C Bars on RS".

That's some results and approaches that may help!!

20774 said:

MJM -

I don't think the google search method will search just a specific forum...it will search the entire bmwmoa.org, including the MOA homepage.

I tried the google method but used "handlebars" and "r100rs" as the search terms (without the quotes)...seemed to return some hits.

For a specific forum search, you might want to try that feature on the forum. Go to the forum and use the Search This Forum up at the right. Unfortunately, using "K75" won't work as the term needs to be more than 3 characters. I used "K75S" (again no quotes) and got quite a few threads, and after paging down a bit, found a thread whose title was "K75 C Bars on RS".

That's some results and approaches that may help!!

Click to expand...

Thanks Kurt. After I posted I tried using dbrick's suggestion and got some hits also. I've been so used to typing "site:xxx space whatIwant" but leaving that out seems to work better. Turns out the K75S bars are preferable as they are shorter but anyway, they are also pretty much impossible to find. I think that cat got out of the bag a long time ago!