If you've ever had trouble with FR's Search function

FR posts ^ | October 30, 2026 | dekster

[deks]

FRiends, I hope this helps in two scenarios:   If you've seen an article somewhere and want to see if it has been posted already on FR, never post the whole article title in the FR search field (in the upper right corner of the Main page).

Or say you want to search FR for an article with a certain word or words. Our esteemed founder Jim Robinson once posted this advice --

"The FR search works best if you confine it to one or two significant words of the title (usually one is all you need)

- and stay away from words of three characters or less. Those don't work at all.

- and avoid typos by using cut and paste rather than typing the words in.

- also, it appears that some people are not choosing the 'Title' option in the pull down [menu]. That's required if you wish to search by title."

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TOPICS: Chit/Chat
KEYWORDS: freeople; frsearch; frtruth; help; jimrobinson; search

[deks]

Over the years I've seen many freeople comment about having trouble with FR's proprietary search function. It seems to work okay for me when I follow Jim Robinson's advice.

[deks]

I have a shortcut that skips the "pull down menu" in search. For example:

Type in the search field "title:trump" Click Search button, and it shows articles with the word Trump in the title including 5 today (I haven't yet personally verified if this is 100% accurate for today but I believe that it is)

Type in the search field "title: trump obama" Click Search button, and it shows a list including 7 articles this month with those two words in the title.

###

Also there’s a shortcut for searching FR articles by Keyword:

Take the URL of the Main page and replace the asterisk with any word that may or may not be an existing Keyword... and marvel at the results!

https://freerepublic.com/tag/*/index

[sopo]

SI before there was AI

[Sequoyah101]

Naaaah, not but most of the time.

[nickcarraway]

This is the exact opposite of reality. Searching by one or two words ONLY works if those key words are added in the field.

[algore]

I still kind of have a problem with the search, even though I know how it works and how it was written.

personally if I don’t find what I am looking for I go to google

for example site:freerepublic.com “brandi kruse”

but in my opinion SunkenCiv is far and away the Free Republic search King. (I can only assume he has his own proprietary search AI which he wrote in his sleep one night long before “fuzzy logic” was the pre-AI buzzword of the day.)

[deks]

I don’t understand what you mean

[algore]

P.S.

Tip 2

If you are searching for recent news, hit control-f and type in a single key word then hit enter, if no result go back a page and do it again.

[SunkenCiv]

The software does some things with user input in the search box in the upper right corner. Short version is like this;

https://freerepublic.com/focus/search?m=all;o=time;q=quick;s=judge

That will list all the topics with ‘judge’ in the title, newest to oldest. The results will only go back to late 2014 though, not sure why.

[deks]

Thank you so much, algore and SunkenCiv! I hope this thread attracts some attention in the spirit of friendship so we all can search more effectively.

[Albion Wilde]

This is the exact opposite of reality. Searching by one or two words ONLY works if those key words are added in the field.

Nah, it really does work, if you keep the longer words in the same order.

Example:

The article titled US approves sale of 500 Patriot missiles to Ukraine,

search with Title: Patriot missiles Ukraine and the article will come up.

I just tested it. Try it and see.

[deks]

And by the way, I’m still getting lag and sometings it hangs. but when I clicked to post this reply it was in like milliseconds 👏

[deks]

Thank you for the test, Albion Wilde! 😊

[daniel1212]

Or use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/search-site-we/?utm_content=addons-manager-reviews-link&utm_medium=firefox-browser&utm_source=firefox-browser

[deks]

Thank yo so much, daniel1212! At you link, I’m seeing the Firefox add-on/extension page, but is there a name for the extension — because I just downloaded Firefox yesterday after having not used it for years.

[Albion Wilde]

👍

Thanks for a useful thread, deks!

[Texan4Life]

I would prefer for the “title” option to be the default option in search, over “keywords.”

[Paladin2]

Does a Venn diagram have FL fully enveloped in the AI area?

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Use a search engine pointed at freerepublic.com.

[frank ballenger]

I don’t understand what you mean

"You" ----Is the second person pronoun.

But that's not important now.

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Just saw the old movie Zero Hour and had to laugh at several points where the later use in Airplane was obvious. The Sterling Hayden tough guy said: "It looks like I chose the wrong week to give smoking." And we have to find someone who can fly a plane and who didn't eat fish.