Can we search discussions by keyword?

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Hi,

I work in traffic law, and am trying to find any past discussions which contain accounts of being pulled over, getting traffic tickets, that kind of stuff. I'm looking around for the search box and see only something that takes me to a Google search. I'm new here and apologize in advance if I've missed something obvious.

Thanks for your help.

The search box at the top is not a Google search per se - scroll down slightly and you'll see that they're all WP pages for your keyword.
Edit: I said scroll down slightly because I saw ads there, but sometimes they're not there it seems.

The search box uses Google services to search only WP's forums (excluding Members Only and Adult Autism Issues) - so any results are all "in house".

Thank you! I never got past the first few ads just assumed it to be a general google search.

Smiling happily and going off to search wrongplanet for my favorite keywords.

The search feature on here is terribly flawed though... you can put in your keywords like a username or word from the title - then you cross your fingers and hope you get something relevant.

Any chance of getting a real, working forum search feature?

Yes - try the little-known advanced search here: http://www.wrongplanet.net/forums-search-results.html
So little-known that even moderators forget it.

It's also possible to have Google search externally (not the private forums, of course) using any of the standard Google query terms explained here:
http://www.googleguide.com/category/query-input/
The basic "search a site" format is just: search-string site:www.wrongplanet.net

The advanced search is probably more immediately useful thought because it's very easy to include forum and author names.

Probably. If this was the standard search method, back then, I'd guess that was because the current Google custom search hadn't been implemented. The advanced search is standard and included with phpBB, so with no other method available it seems an obvious thing to use.