Cricket

I'm trying to search the board efficiently, so I don't ask questions that have been asked 1,000 times, as I'm sure I just did with the Rome neighboorhood question. Having some trouble. I'm typing in key words to search and it's only pulling up my first word. For instance, I typed in &quot;Rome, Vatican&quot; and what came back had no reference to the Vatican, just Rome posts. What's the trick here?<BR><BR>Thanks.<BR>Cricket<BR>

Victress

Try just Vatican, most of the entries will also have info about Rome. Try without the comma too.

Cricket

Okay. But what if I want to look up something specific, say &quot;Roman gardens&quot; for example. Neither word by itself would get me far. They need to go together. Any suggestions?

x_x_x

Try typing Rome + gardens<BR>or Rome + Vatican

indytravel

I have an unproved hypothesis about the Fodor’s travel forum: “Every imaginable question has been asked and answered at least twice on the forum.” So if every question has been answered at least twice, why can’t I search and find it?<BR><BR>Well, here we go with my own personal conspiracy theory. If every answer is out there why would people keep visiting and using the forum? You could pop in, type a couple of words and get the answer. I don’t think many people would bother to be on the site too much because answers would be quick, easy and painless. So if the search doesn’t work well, new people have to keep asking the same questions and regulars have to keep answering for the new people. Therefore when everyone visits the site they’re exposed to the advertising. <BR><BR>It’s not as good as JFK, Elvis or Marilyn Monroe, but it’s the best I have going right now. <BR>

John

Hey, Indytravel, great theory. I also suspected something similar just never posted it. <BR><BR>Elvis says hello!!!!!

Christina

okay, these are the rules as they work for me:<BR>1) think efficiently about what you are searching for, so you really need to complicate it and make so many words? Are the words you are searching on really the ones that would likely appear in a discussion? For example, there is obviously no need to search for rome with vatican because there is no other vatican except in rome. There are many such searches where you don't need so many words<BR>2) continuing, if you want to know about gardens in rome, the most likely words would be &quot;gardens&quot; and &quot;rome&quot; -- NOT &quot;roman gardens&quot; If a phrase were about the Borghese gardens, for example, it is very likely the word &quot;roman&quot; won't be in the post.<BR>3) if you search on a phrase in the box, Fodors searchs on that EXACT phrase, as it appears, not either word (ie, &quot;roman gardens&quot; will get you one post with that exact phrase)<BR>4) do NOT use special or funny characters, punctuation, asterisks, or even a &quot;+&quot; sign as proposed above. This does NOT work. Fodors appears to stop when it reaches such a sign (ie, &quot;rome + gardens&quot; will search on rome only, I think).<BR>5) you CAN search on appearance of two words anywhere in the post by using the word &quot;and&quot; (not the plus sign) -- eg, &quot;rome and gardens&quot; will get what you want.<BR>6) for a specific location, it is often useful to click on the correct country name to limit the search. In many cases, if you can't think of a really unique word, you can come close and using the country tab will winnow results to a few which you can sift through easily, perhaps.