Difficulty Finding Info with only two digits of Model Year designated

[papasmith]

Like a lot of people, I am in the habit of using only the final two years when designation the model year of my car. Problem is, when I do a search through this forum, the search engine will not allow a search with less than a search string of 3 digits or letters. A search using a subject sometimes will miss a lot of good information. Is there a way around this. Like I said, subject search sometimes misses good info.

[mwt]

Use 4 digits?

Mike

[papasmith]

Originally Posted by mwt

Use 4 digits?

Mike

I have used 4 digits in my search string but this method misses many messages where the author only uses 2 digits in refering to the model year. Thus, the only way to find all references to a 1993 Taurus is to search through the whole forum on that car. Subject searches are unpredictable because of the different ways in describing a problem.

[KimMG]

I typed 93 Taurus (without any punctuation) and got pages of hits. I also typed 93 without punctuation and got pages of posts. Problem with this type of search is maybe the '92 or '94 are essentually the same car and the search would miss any posts about identical problems. Also you may want to check out the Mercury Sable board (same car as Taurus). Searching can be very time consuming. You may have to do several searches (subjects and years) in order to find what you need. What's the problem you're researching? Maybe someone can answer your question directly.

[papasmith]

Originally Posted by KimMG

I typed 93 Taurus (without any punctuation) and got pages of hits. I also typed 93 without punctuation and got pages of posts. Problem with this type of search is maybe the '92 or '94 are essentually the same car and the search would miss any posts about identical problems. Also you may want to check out the Mercury Sable board (same car as Taurus). Searching can be very time consuming. You may have to do several searches (subjects and years) in order to find what you need. What's the problem you're researching? Maybe someone can answer your question directly.

I just typed in "93 Taurus", just like you did, and got that which follows this paragraph as a reply. I don't know what the difference is. The search engine, at least on my end, will not accept "93". Many people refer to their cars just using two digits. Note, I did not put the quotations in my search. Additionally, I can find the information. However, as in the case with many popular models, such as the Taurus, there are thousands of posts. Thus far, I have found all the information I have needed. However, in one case, it was because one person directed me with a link to a post that he had started and this was after about 3 weeks of having my post up. This post was not found by me because it refered to the model year of the car using two digits. This is certainly a wonderful service. I wish there was a way to overcome this limitation. Again, the following is what I got when I did a search using "93 Taurus".

The search term you specified (93) is under the minimum word length (3) and therefore will not be found. Please make this term longer.

If this term contains a wildcard, please make this term more specific.

[KimMG]

I entered 93 in the search box by the word google at the top and clicked on AF before clicking search.