Answers How-To: Advanced Search
We know that when visiting Yahoo! Answers you’re here either to ask a question or answer a question. For many of you, your main objective is to lend a hand and answer as many questions about your area of expertise as possible, but often, you’re unable to easily find the right types of questions.
While a basic search (using the top search bar) will produce quick search results, the advanced search function will help you pinpoint specific terms within targeted categories.
Answers community member Calimecita is well known across the community for her expertise in Biology/Zoology and has worked with us to provide useful Answers tips from Answers users. Read on for her tips:
“Using Advanced Search you can:
- Find questions that match specific words or phrases, and/or exclude specific terms
- Search questions or best answers only
- Search by category or subcategory
- Choose to search among all English vs. only your home portal questions
- Filter by question status (open, resolved, undecided)
- Restrict by question time frame
You also have the option of saving this search and making it your default “advanced search” for the future by checking the “Make this my default search” box.
Says Cali: “With Advanced Search, I can locate open questions about specific topics quickly and efficiently, without restricting myself to a single category. I’ve even set up a few Yahoo! Alerts based on the RSS feeds from these Search results, so that I receive those questions as emails.”
“When I need an Answer, I restrict my search to “Resolved Questions” only and use some of the other options, such as “search for exact phrase” and “none of these words”, to find very specific content (for example, information about turkeys that doesn’t involve Thanksgiving recipes, or a question about vampires – not the Twilight kind
).
I see lots of comments and requests in the Suggestion Board for ways to do these things – and many users don’t know that Advanced Search is the answer.”
For an even more in-depth look at what the advanced search feature can do for you, stop by Calimecita’s Unofficial Answers Tutorial, found here: http://calitorial.webs.com/searchsort.htm
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Hi Y!AT
Just a quick note, It is nice to see Cali featured on this
Will read the rest later.
Yep, cool seeing Calimecita’s hints as a recommendation.
How can we uncheck “Make this my default search”? It takes two minutes to fix it, but you ignored it. I’ll decide when to make it my default search – don’t decide for me.
I had no idea what the Andvanced Search was. Now I’ll use it all the time. I love this place!
Thanks for this. It’s a great help. I’m thrilled to see a link to Cali’s incredible tutorial. It’s been a tremendous help to me in understanding and using Answers. Thanks Cali.
I have about 5-6 search results fed to “My Yahoo!” every day.
It sure beats swimming through the Y!A site when a have only a few mins to kill at work, in between tasks.
Love the Blog and a “Holla” to Dr Cali
very helpful!
Thanks for highlighting a useful feature and a great Yahoo user!
Thanks a heap for the instructions.
However, I recently used Advanced Search to no avail ! I tried all of the options : resolved Qs, specific words, time-range, etc., but haven’t yet found what i was looking for
Is there a multi-dimensional, progressive search too? I found this uni-dimensional, in the sense that one can choose only one option at a time.
This is the same search engine that has existed for years. It is third rate and terribly needs upgrading. A tutorial for a bad service does not improve things. Users have asked Yahoo to upgrade the advanced search for three years. The only way it is currently usable is to convert it to a RSS feed so it at least falls out in chronological order without having to put in “fixes” because Yahoo can not create proper sort routines. Even as a RSS, search results can be filled with Deleted Posts and Resolved Posts, when Open was chosen. The time restrictions available are a joke.
I understand they are working on an upgrade. Every last employee at YA should work on it until it is finished. No more blog posts should be created on any subject until it is functional.
Questions that are within ones field of expertise should be sent to a special folder right next to the “My stared questions” folder on the profile page, that would make this site a lot more convenient, also, the option to allow or disallow e-mail notifications regarding questions in ones field of interest should be implemented.
Nice tips, but it would be great if the search feature was even remotely as useful as any other. I see the same questions repeatedly, and I know I’ve composed the perfect response. Finding just my own answers is a serious effort that is often fruitless even when I know an exact phrase. There’s no easy way to have the results returned by date order, and I can’t even just search my own answers, or even sort them by the topic I posted in. The search feature is in desperate need of an overhaul by someone who knows what they’re doing. I honestly don’t believe whoever put this one together did.
Hey, somebody
You wrote “Questions that are within ones field of expertise should be sent to a special folder right next to the “My stared questions” folder on the profile page, that would make this site a lot more convenient”
If you combine the RSS feed from the Search result with the Yahoo! Alerts service, you can get the questions you want delivered to your email box – and then you can create a folder and a filter to send them there if you want
Check my tutorial and you’ll find easy instructions.
meenakshi, Henry and MissLabeled, I agree that there’s a lot of room for improvement in this feature – but I’m still thrilled that it’s being advertised for the general public. It’ll be easier to detect and fix the problems when more people are using it
Hey MissLabeled,
I just noticed your comment “There’s no easy way to have the results returned by date order”
It’s not as easy as it should be, but you can sort by date by adding “&s=-date” (without the quotation marks) for Newest to Oldest, or “&s=+date” for Oldest to Newest.
i wd like to have the result as soon as possible….itz a civil engg. related question
Thanks Calimecita. I read your blog & the instructions are pretty thorough.
i also include my ‘voice’ to the suggestions by other posters.
i have always felt the need to sort out my answers in terms of categories. it is easier for me, as well as anybody who browses through my profile.
one more suggestion : Y!A has a system of timing one’s Q & A according to days, weeks, months, years. How about having ‘days’ till the Q is open; and ‘week’, if required, for about a month. But after that, it would be So much easier to convert it into the actual month & year instead of the reverse ‘progression’ of 5 months or 8 months, & so on.
This will bring a lot of consistency & easy location of Q & A, thus making searches more fruitful.
Despite it’s glitches & shortcomings, I still love Y!A & would continue to frequent its by-lanes
)
As an example : I was looking for a Q posted on or just before July 4th of this year, in B&A. Disastrous results & futile search. Should I look for 5 months ago or 6 months ago ; what is the cut-off date?
Calimecita,
“It’s not as easy as it should be, but you can sort by date by adding “&s=-date” (without the quotation marks) for Newest to Oldest, or “&s=+date” for Oldest to Newest.”
is not a solution, it is an EMBARRASSMENT that Yahoo should be red faced about. Two simple links and they can not add them to the search results screen. If it was Microsoft, they would be a laughingstock all over the internet. I have undergraduate engineers doing class projects that fix such functions in hours. Yahoo has had years.
“but I’m still thrilled that it’s being advertised for the general public.”
How about just making the font bigger on the screen where people can see it. The best advertisement they could make.
The real best advertisement they could make would be to fix it. Then users might actually suggest using it without having to hold their nose and warn that it is third rate.
Hi !
I don’t know about this advanced search. But I am thinking it’s most useful to me.
Thanks.
Very helpful.
wow awesome I’m going to use this all the time now.
Hi meenakshi, good suggestions! I hope the Team are reading
Henry,
I completely agree with you that there are many basic things that should be fixed by now – but I’m not an employee and can’t make things happen, so I keep giving my feedback and I’m happy when improvements and fixes are made. After all this time I’ve come to understand that nothing is as simple or easy to fix in YA as we think it should be… must be a complex working environment, to put it mildly :-/
Why does the “All” radio button in Advanced Search say “All”, thereby meaning that it searches all Answers, when, in fact, it only searches the Questions and Best Answers, and ignores all other Answers?
Change Advanced Search so that when the “All” button is selected it does actually search all Answers. Then, we will have a “real time” Search for seeking out Spam and Malware on Answers, rather than having to resort to Google Search, with its own inadequacies to the purpose, to find that capability.
No, I also did not know this was available. Great suggestion.