Realized I was using the wrong search operators for years

I was always getting garbage results on Google for niche forum topics, spending twenty minutes scrolling. Then a friend watched me type 'how to fix a leaky pipe forum' and said 'why aren't you using site:reddit.com or quotes?' I tried site:reddit.com 'leaky pipe' and got exactly what I needed in five seconds. Has anyone else had that moment where a basic trick made you feel like an idiot?

2 comments

2 Comments

rubysingh4d ago

Actually site:reddit.com only searches the main domain, you gotta use site:reddit.com/r/ for subreddits.

wesley1814d ago

Wait, so site:reddit.com doesn't search everything on Reddit? That actually makes a lot of sense now because I've definitely gotten posts from random subreddits that had nothing to do with what I was looking for. But then how do people find stuff in private or quarantined subreddits? I tried looking up something on a sub that's set to private and got zero results even with the full URL. Are there tricks for that or is it just a lost cause? Also do you ever use the minus sign trick to filter out garbage? I keep trying that with keywords but half the time it still shows results with those words anyway, feels like Google just ignores the minus sometimes.

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