Guide to Using Google to Search HomeBrewTalk.com

The following is certainly not new information, but it will make it easier to get answers to your questions.

Most (all?) forum search boxes suck, HBT included. Some forums, like HBT, give you the option to use Google to search. Using Google to search HBT will give you tons of information to help answer your homebrew related questions.

Notice the search box in the top left of the site.



If you click the little down arrow, you will see the Google Custom Search Box:



Enter your search terms, hit enter (or press "GO") and voila:



Here is a comparison of that search using the regular forum search results*



Another way to accomplish the HBT Google Search is to use the site: query in Google itself:



What this does is tells Google to search just the site:homebrewtalk.com for the keywords: kettle size.

You can save this URL as a bookmark and when you open the bookmark you just need to enter your keywords and submit the search:

https://www.google.com/#q=site:homebrewtalk.com

Since I am a geek, I have a text-expander app on my computer so when I type hbtt into my browsers address bar it expands to site:homebrewtalk.com. Then I just type my keyword and hit enter.

Hope this helps

* I filtered the regular results on Forum only, it will show results from HBT Blog, Classifieds, Reviews, etc.

Thanks! Knew there had to be a better way because to say the standard search sucks, is an understatement. Unfortunately I'm not a "geek" as you say (I just call it computer illiterate) and have been fighting the search battle (and loosing) for a long time.......


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

501irishred said:

Thanks! Knew there had to be a better way because to say the standard search sucks, is an understatement. Unfortunately I'm not a "geek" as you say (I just call it computer illiterate) and have been fighting the search battle (and loosing) for a long time.......


Sent from my iPad using Home Brew

Click to expand...

Glad it helped

The site: search technique I mentioned above is helpful for any website. I use it almost daily (off HBT). Whenever I am on a site that has terrible search, I'll go to google and use:

site:www.SiteThatHasCrappySearch.com "keywords I want to use"

So much better!

Thanks. My search was already defaulted to google on HBT, but you answered my question as to why my results looked weird sometimes. I must have accidentally used the regular site search.

This is also a good way to search terms that are 3 characters or less. The forum search doesn't recognize (or just ignores) words that have fewer than 4 characters, but Google doesn't.