Search Voat is an independent search site, not affiliated with Voat. 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 and minuses work there too, eg *news
- Limit the search to submissions by a particular user by typing it into User. Wildcards 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 searchable, 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.
flyawayhigh ago
While this is a fantastic project, and I like the idea of having a searchable user base, it should incorporate the DELETE feature as quickly as possible.
I delete submissions for three reasons.
I post new articles before I check the subverse. This reduces the number of clicks I make. On the internet, every click counts when it seems like 10,000 a day. So, after I post, I check the subverse to upvoat other submissions and to check for similar posts. If there is a similar post, I delete my new post.
I sometimes post articles before I finish them. Sometimes, I find that I don't like the article, so I delete it. Some of these are actually embarrassing. :P
To clear out excess clutter, I like to delete posts that sit there with no interest after a few hours, unless I'm really attached to them.
I REALLY don't want deleted posts to show up in a search.
Otherwise, what is the point of the DELETE BUTTON??
By failing to recognize the delete function, this project does not recognize or honor the full function of the Voat system.
Isn't there a way to run some kind of loop to check for deletions?
VoatSearch ago
I wish there was a painless way to solve this problem. As you say, the only way to do this automatically is for Search Voat to retrieve each submission on a loop multiple times, just in case it has been deleted. Unfortunately, retrieving submissions from Voat is the most computationally expensive part of Search Voat, both for me and for Voat. It's not practical for me, and anyway I don't want to do anything which increases the load on Voat's servers.
The best I can suggest is this: add a comment to the post you are deleting saying something like "@VoatSearch delete this". That will ping me and I will manually remove the post from the database. (If it happens a lot, I will update my bot to do the deletion automatically at my end, so this isn't a great hardship for me.)
I am sorry that this requires extra keystrokes & clicks for you, but it's really the only solution I can think of. I hope it's ok for you.
(Incidentally, Search Voat only retrieves v/all/new every 30 minutes, so if you delete your post reasonably soon after making it, it probably won't appear in search results.)
PS do you use AVE? I don't, but I wonder whether it could automatically post that "please delete" comment...
flyawayhigh ago
That's a great idea. I'll try to keep it to a minimum. :)
Maybe in the future, there will be a way to do it automatically.
CANCEL-CAT-FACTS ago
Great search engine. Have used it several times and would recommend. Thanks for explaining about indexing submissions, I was wondering why some posts I remembered weren't coming up.
@HenryCorp
VoatSearch ago
Thanks for the kind words CCF!