Searching More Effectively

stevemur — Fri, 24 Sep 2004 20:58:05 GMT

Let's say you want to find an appetizer that contains Brie Cheese.

You could launch BigOven, and simply try to type in "Brie Cheese Appetizer" into the Quick Find Box. That tells BigOven you want to find all recipes that have the specific characters "Brie Cheese Appetizer" somewhere in the title of the recipe or the instructions text. That's awfully limiting. Fine, you say. You back off a bit and simply type "Brie Cheese" in the find box. But that won't narrow it down to appetizers.

The thing to remember about quick find is that doesn't quite work the same way Google does -- it only searches the title and instructions of the recipe for the exact string that you enter. We are looking into more advanced text searches for BigOven, but in the meantime:

Don't Be Shy -- Use Advanced Find!

A much better way to do this type of query is by Advanced Find, which is available via the "More Options" button on the Find dialog.

In the Ingredients section, type in "brie" (not "brie cheese", just "brie"... because some recipes might have ingredient lines containing "brie", some might have "brie cheese", some might have "wheel of brie", and we want them all.) Click the arrow button to add it to your filter.

And in the Keywords section, type in "Appetizers". Click the right arrow to add it.

Tell it to search on BigOven.com via the checkbox at the bottom of the Advanced Find dialog, and click Find Recipes. That's it! BigOven will now find over 40 brie cheese appetizers.

BigOven Tips

Searching More Effectively