Search Manual (informal, by example)

Basic Search

Single word search will match ads with that word ANYWHERE and in either UPPERCASE or LOWERCASE:

For:

This will match ads like the following:

Multiple word "AND" search uses the plus (+) sign to separate multiple words that must be present in the ad, in any order:

For:

This will match ads like the following:

Multiple word "OR" search uses the comma (,) symbol to separate multiple words such that at least one must be present in the ad:

For:

This will match ads like the following:

Phrase search is on by default, meaning that without the plus (+) or comma (,) operators, what you type in the search box is considered as one long word:

For:

This will match ads like the following:

Because the exact characters s,e,i,k,o, ,m,o,n,s,t,e,r were present (notice the space is considered part of this one long word).

Advanced Search

The biggest mistake I see is people trying to speak English to the search program instead of tailoring their search to match the text that the ad poster choses as his title.

For:

This is worthless because its unlikely someone selling a seiko watch is going to have that exact phrase in the title of his ad.

Cast a wider net with the OR operator. Suppose you want to search for diving watches. If your search was:

For:

You will miss the guy that posted his "seiko diver". What about the guy that posted his "scuba watch" or simply "dive watch". What about those that just post a model number like "skx007k" ? The search you want in this particular situation is one that will match on any of these words ("dive" or "diver" or "diving" or "scuba" or "skx"):

For:

Notice that "dive" also takes care of matching "diver" in ad title.

You can combine AND and OR using parenthesis to make really powerful searches!

Let's say you're a Texan looking for a lower receiver in your home state. Sellers will put alot of different markings in their ad title for texas, maybe "texas" or "dallas" or "dfw" or "tx" or "houston". We want to hit ads that have at least one of those, but always has the word "lower". This is a combination AND/OR:

For: