Here are some tips and tricks for using Search Voat:

• Search for words which appear in a submission's title and message text, by typing them in the Search text box
• Check Title only to search only the submission titles, not message text
• Use an asterisk as a wildcard in all search terms, eg butt* to match butt, button and butthurt
• Put a minus/hyphen on the front of a word to exclude it, eg bill -clinton
• Put search text in double quotes to search for an exact phrase, eg "I identify as"
• Limit the search to submissions in a specific subverse by typing it into Subverse, eg HillaryforJail. Wildcards & minuses work there too, eg *news
• Limit the search to submissions by a particular user by typing it into User. Wildcards & minuses work there too, eg -amalek* (ok, I tried...)
• Limit the search to submissions linked to a particular website by typing it into Website eg youtube.com¹
• NSFW submissions are excluded unless you check the box for NSFW. (Check NSFW and leave the rest of the search terms blank to see only NSFW submissions)
• Sort by New (default) or Sort by Old

¹Websites are searched transparently through archive and translation sites, so if a gawker.com page is archived at archive.is, you can still find it by searching for Website gawker.com. Results will include both archived and non-archived links. Also, some sites with multiple domains (eg youtube.com and youtu.be) are aggregated.

Click Filter to apply the search terms and list the filtered submissions.

Click All to clear all the search terms and list all submissions.

Click the lamp icon to toggle night mode.

Within the results, click on a website, user name, or subverse to apply a (further) filter.

Limitations:

• SearchVoat is progressively indexing submissions but so far it is complete only for the last couple of months. Prior to that, SearchVoat only has about 20-25% of submissions, although this should gradually increase.
• The shortest searchable word is 3 letters. You may be able to search for shorter words in phrases by surrounding them with "double quotes".
• Comments are not indexed, and probably won't ever be.
• Submission scores, and numbers of comments, are not available, and probably won't ever be. So you can't sort by score or most commented.

Enjoy.