How to Search the Classifieds Database

Search will conduct a search of all the words in the ad heading and ad text area only. The results are listed in order of their ranking determined by how often the words were used compared to similar ads. Only words of four or more characters will be included in a search.

1. Select a Category: The default is "All Categories" which will search every active ad. If you want to limit your search to a certain major category, select it from the pull down menu.

2. Keywords: This is important. This determines what will be searched for. If you are looking for a pool and you type in pools as your search pattern, then the word pools will be searched for. This may not turn up very many results as it is unlikely that a person would have included the word pools in their ad unless there were selling more than one pool.
Likewise, if I was looking for a good home for my "Yeller dog", you would not find my ad if you were looking for a "Yellow dog". Also, the words babysitters or motorcycles are not good search words because of their plural content. It is more likely that a person will post words like "I will baby sit". And a person selling a vehicle will post "Motorcycle for sale" if they are just selling one.

3. Match all words: If you have only one keyword there is no need to check this box. But if you are using two or more keywords (of 4 or more characters), checking this box will only show those ads that contain all the words you are searching. So if you used the keywords 2000 ford without checking the box, the search will return all active ads that contained the words "2000" and "ford" regardless of the rest of the ad content. You could narrow the search by checking the box then only ads which included both word will appear. But with this if a person was selling a 2000 Taurus and did not include the word Ford in their ad, the ad would not be selected.