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Tips on Searching the MOA Forum

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20774

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There are several ways to search for information on the MOA forum. There are basically three programs or utilities that can search the forum. They are:

1) Use the search feature within the forum software, vBulletin
2) Search for information using the Tags system that is also a part of vBulletin
3) Use the power of Google and their web indexing system to search for specific info on the MOA site

Each of these three will be discussed below. Following that, some general tips on how to search regardless of the approach.
 
vBulletin Search Utilities

Within vBulletin, there are 3 different ways to search the forum. These are:

1) global search
2) advanced search
3) search within a forum

Global Search

In the upper right hand corner of the main forum page is an open box with a magnifying glass next to it. By entering a word or phrase into this box and selecting the magnifier, the entire forum will be searched for this word or the words in the phrase. Results will be returned which lists the threads where the words are either in the title of the thread or buried somewhere within the thread.

Note that vBulletin doesn't have any search features to restrict the words searched, especially if a phrase is used. So if you search for the words gear oil, results will be for the words gear and oil independent of each other. Some of the results will be for gear oil but that is only because both words were being searched on.
 

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vBulletin Search Utilities

The second of the vBulletin search features is the Advanced Search, which is just below the global search box discussed above. From the main forum page, clicking on this link brings up the window as shown below. Typically, the Search Single Content Type tab is displayed and used. The key features that are used here are in the Search For section as well as the Additional Options section.

In Search For, you again type in the Keyword(s) (ie, your word or phrase) you want information. Note that the same limitations on phrases exists as described previously. To the right of the this box is a choice to search in Entire Posts or Titles Only. This can be handy if you remember that what you want is in the title of a thread/post and this will eliminate other search results which finds the keyword within the post.

In the User Name area, you can filter results or look for posts by a member's user name. Begin by typing that user's forum name into the box. As you type, matches to that user name will being to show. Once you've typed enough of the letters and you see the user's forum name, just click and it will fill in the box. Or of you just know the user's forum name, type it in directly. If you want to have exact matches only, make sure the box is checked.

For now, we'll skip of the Tag section and discuss it later on.

At the bottom under Additional Options, there are options to select a time period to search (and either before or after that) as well as sort the search results according to a preferred order.

Note that you can save your search preferences by choosing that feature.
 

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vBulletin Search Utilities

vBulletin also has the option of searching just within a Specific Forum. This is activated by clicking on the link Search Forum in the upper right hand portion of each forum. When you click on the link, a display similar to below will be shown. Note the two radio buttons on the left. You can choose to display results either as threads or by the individual posts. If you choose to display the results as threads, your search word/phrase could either be part of the title or within the thread which would mean you would have to open that thread and navigate around until you find the specific post you were interested in. If you choose to display the results as posts, then each post with the word or phrase will be listed.
 

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vBulletin Search Utilities

Notice the Advanced Search link in the previous image. This functions similar to what was discussed on the global forum advanced search, but with additional features.

You still have the ability to type the keyword and the user name for additional filters as mentioned before, but the Additional Options section has expanded. This section is shown below.

The forum that you are searching in is highlighted. If you wish to expand the specific forums you are searching, hold the Control key down on the keyboard and click one or more other forums in the list. Use the Control key to toggle forums on or off for this type of search.

If you know that the info you're looking for is in a thread with many replies, or you want to find a thread with some active discussion, you can use the Find Threads With feature.

As before, you can find posts based upon time as well as sort the results by specific characteristics.

At the bottom, you can chose whether to display results by titles of threads or by specific posts. Again, if the info is contained within a thread, you will have to open up the thread and navigate to find your results.
 

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vBulletin Search Utilities - Tags

Another useful tool in searching the forum is by using the tags in the tag cloud. These tags are entered at the bottom of each thread and can be entered by anyone. The tags should be somewhat specific about the issue, maybe one word or a couple of words. One of the Moderators, Omega Man, wrote up a Best of the Forum a while back that introduced this subject. That discussion is here:

http://forums.bmwmoa.org/showthread.php?75890-Do-you-ever-use-the-quot-Tag-Cloud-quot

For example, the top part of the picture below shows a few tags added for a thread on helmets, amongst other things. Clicking on any of the tags you to other threads that have had the same tag added.

If you click on the link for View Tag Cloud, you will see an image such as the bottom part of the image below. This shows you the 70 most popular tags and also provides the ability to search the tag cloud for all tags.

So, this can be a powerful tool.
 

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Searching using Google Site Search Tool

The last utility for searching the MOA forum is to use google and their power indexed database. Google uses various automated spiders and bots to scour the internet, looking for information their algorithm deems as useful or important.

A new link has been added to the top menu on the forum as shown in the attached image. Clicking this link will open up a new tabbed window with the main screen for google displayed. In order to search the MOA website (include the homepage), the following phrases are entered into the search box:

site:bmwmoa.org xxxx

where xxxx is what you want to search for. Results will be shown for the forum, the MOA homepage, or both that match.

Google has some useful features that are typical for most internet search engines. These are listed below:

- searching for gear oil results in hits that contain gear, oil, and gear oil as was discussed earlier.

- searching for "gear oil" (note the double quotes around the term) will present results which have these two words in exactly that order

- the use of AND, OR, NOT can also be used to further restrict the results. AND requires the results have both words gear plus oil to be found. OR means that either gear or oil will be in the results. If NOT is used such as gear NOT oil, then any results that have oil in the listing won't be returned.

Details for how to search using google are given here:

https://support.google.com/websearch/?hl=en#topic=3081620

Tips to refine the google search are given here:

https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/2466433?hl=en
 

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General Search Strategies

As I've poked around the internet searching for things, I've figured a few things out to help with searching. This is by far not an extensive list but just some things to think about when searching.

The first thing is that if you can remember a specific word, something that might be considered unique associated with the content you're searching for, be sure and use that. This will bring the search results closer to the top of the page. Again if you're searching for gear oil but you specifically are interested in a particular brand (Valvoline, Royal Purple), then use that in the search.

If you can get down to just one word to search for and it is that unique word, you should have excellent results. More words brings more hits, and often unrelated, into the results page.

One thing that I've found useful, especially when searching using google, is to put something like BMW motorcycle final drive into the search box. You'd be surprised what shows up with BMW motorcycle also included in the search field.

And when you're looking at the text listing of your results, consider clicking on the Images link at the top of the page. Again, some interesting results will show up that help you narrow your search down. Usually I find that after scrolling down a number of times, the images I'm seeing are starting to become less and less like what I'm looking for. But still, there could be some gems to be seen. If I want to refresh my search, I usually go back to the basic google site (click on Web at the top), type in my new phrase, then click back to the images for viewing. I'm not sure if that helps or not, but in my experience it seems to.

Somewhat contrary to the above, try not to include too many words in your search phrase. That just starts to bring in more and more unrelated results that makes it harder to find what you want.

As for vBulletin, there are other limitations not discussed previously. One annoying thing, and it can't be changed, is that you can't search for any 3-letter words. This was done to cut down on situations where common words are entered in the search phrase and thus creating a useless set of results. So searching for GSA, RTP, ESA, to name a few won't work.

That's a few other considerations when performing searches. I hope that helps.

The Mod Team...
 
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