Gather Tip: Advanced Article Searches

I wanted to write this tip article because I've heard from a few members recently that they've had trouble finding the articles they're looking for on Gather.  Even when you know who the author is, some Gather members have posted hundreds of articles in the past, and cycling through their pages of articles can be a real drag.

So, I'm reminding you all of some of the advanced searching options that Gather introduced several months ago. 

First and foremost, you can always use the main search bar at the very top and center of any Gather page.  Use the dropdown menu to select what type of search you want to perform.  The default option is "search articles."  This simple search tool works best when searching for article titles, or keywords (not necessarily tags) from the article.  Soon, the simple article search will also be able to search author's names, so a search for "Chuck McGuire" should yield articles that I have written, and perhaps other members' articles that mention my name.

If you want to make your search more exact, you'll find our advanced search options very useful.  You can find these advanced options in 3 ways:

1. Click the white "Articles" navigational tab, near the top of most pages but below the banner advertisement.  Then, look for a link near the top of the article list that says "Search all articles on Gather."  Then click "Advanced Search" next to the search bar on the page that comes up.
   
2. Perform a "simple" article search first, and then click "Advanced Search" on the results page that comes up.
3. Add the URL "http://www.gather.com/searchResultsArticles.jsp" to your browser's bookmarks or favorite places for easy access in the future.

When you click "Advanced Search," the search bar will expand to reveal several more searching options.  These include:

• search terms - Use this to type in any key words or phrases that you want to search Gather's articles database for.  These are different from "tags," which have their own search field.
• title - Self-explanatory... enter the title of the article if you know it, or any words or phrases you think are in the title.
• member name - This field searches both usernames and display names.  It's very useful for searching among the articles of a specific member, especially if they have a unique name. 
  
• group name - If you want to narrow your search to articles published to a certain group, type the group name here.
• with these tags - Use this field to limit your search only to articles containing certain tags.  You can enter as many tags as you like, but be sure to separate them with commas.
• published between - Use these to limit your search to a certain time period.

Once you've performed your search and you have a page of results in front of you, there are yet more options for refining these results.

First of all, a dropdown menu allows you to sort your results by the following:

• Relevance
• Date posted
• Highest rating
• Most ratings
• Most discussed

In the left-hand column, you can further refine the search results in front of you by tags or groups published to.  You can narrow your search by as many groups or tags as you'd like.

At the top of this column, under the heading "Content Found," you instantly change the scope of the results to reflect images or video that meet the same search criteria you used in your article search.  This is a very useful but oft-overlooked feature.

Most of these same advanced search options and refinement tools are available for images and video as well.  From an article search page, look for the orange bar that crosses the screen above any of the search fields, but below the banner ad.  Click "images" or "video" to perform advanced searched for these content types.  You should also explore the advanced searching options offered for people and groups searches, as well.