You can also use quotes to get better search results, e.g., if I was looking for posts about campus work opportunities, I’d try searching “campus job” or “campus jobs” (WITH the quotes). That will avoid returning pages that are less relevant, e.g., “By the time I’m getting ready to leave campus, I hope I have at least a couple of job offers.”
Here are a few more search tips:
Searching CC with Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Yet another approach is to let Google or another search engine help. For example, if you use this search string on Google
[site:collegeconfidential.com</a> on campus job](<a href=“http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Acollegeconfidential.com+on+campus+job&btnG=Google+Search]site:collegeconfidential.com”>http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Acollegeconfidential.com+on+campus+job&btnG=Google+Search)
You’ll get Google-quality results (they don’t have a big problem with short or common words) AND you’ll get results from this forum, as well as articles from the main [College</a> Confidential](<a href=“http://www.collegeconfidential.com/]College”>http://www.collegeconfidential.com/) site, plus results from the [“classic</a>” college discussion forum](<a href=“http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/]"classic”>http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/) that doesn’t accept posts but is still there to read.
Similarly, you can search JUST the forum if you prefer by using a slightly different search string (using **talk.**collegeconfidential.com):
[site:talk.collegeconfidential.com</a> on campus job<a href=“illustrated%20with%20%5Burl=%22http://www.msn.com/%5DMSN%5B/url%5D%20-%20425%20results”>/url</a>
[url=<a href=“http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Atalk.collegeconfidential.com+on+campus+job&sm=Yahoo!+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8]site:talk.collegeconfidential.com”>http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Atalk.collegeconfidential.com+on+campus+job&sm=Yahoo!+Search&fr=FP-tab-web-t&toggle=1&cop=&ei=UTF-8]site:talk.collegeconfidential.com</a> on campus job<a href=“illustrated%20with%20%5Burl=%22http://www.yahoo.com%5DYahoo%5B/url%5D%20-%20372%20results”>/url</a>
[url=<a href=“http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=site%3Atalk.collegeconfidential.com+on+campus+job]site:talk.collegeconfidential.com”>http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=site%3Atalk.collegeconfidential.com+on+campus+job]site:talk.collegeconfidential.com</a> on campus job<a href=“illustrated%20with%20%5Burl=http://www.google.com%5DGoogle%5B/url%5D%20-%20541%20results”>/url</a>
Here’s a more complex example that happens to use Google:
[url=<a href=“http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=site%3Atalk.collegeconfidential.com+“computer+science”+“Carnegie+Mellon”&btnG=Search]site:talk.collegeconfidential.com”>http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=site%3Atalk.collegeconfidential.com+“computer+science”+“Carnegie+Mellon”&btnG=Search]site:talk.collegeconfidential.com</a> “computer science” “Carnegie Mellon”](<a href=“http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=site%3Atalk.collegeconfidential.com+on+campus+job&FORM=QBRE]site:talk.collegeconfidential.com”>http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=site%3Atalk.collegeconfidential.com+on+campus+job&FORM=QBRE)
So why use the CC Forum’s own search engine? One reason is that the results are always up to date - the search engines are pulling pages from our site 24/7, but they may not have the most recent posts in their index. Another is to utilize the special features in the [Advanced</a> Search](<a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/search.php?]Advanced”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/search.php?) - you can search for posts by a particular member, you can specify a forum to search, you can also display your results as threads or individual posts, and much more. Plus, CC’s internal forum search engine understands the structure of posts and threads, so you’ll never get redundant or confusing results.
Searching Long Threads. Note, too, that you can search an individual thread at CC using the “Search This Thread” dropdown. This is handy if it’s a multipage thread and you are looking for something specific.