Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Search Craigslist using a Boolean OR

Thanks so much to Lifehacker.com.au for this one

I want to search Craigslist for Volvo wheels, using a combination of AND'ed, OR'ed and excluded terms:
volvo ('rims 'tires 'wheels) -850 -740

The term "volvo" is required. One of the terms "rims" "tires" "wheels" is required. Search results that include either "850" or "740" are filtered out, i.e., excluded.

The apostrophe works as a Boolean OR, and the parenthesis work to require a Boolean AND between "volvo" and the terms inside the parenthesis.

http://www.lifehacker.com.au/tips/2008/06/03/search_craiglist_using_a_boolean_or-2.html

Link

2 comments:

PatrickHenryPDX said...

As of December, 2008, it appears that Craigslist has changed somthing, because the 'OR' no longer works.

PatrickHenryPDX said...

Interesting - Craigslist now says how to do 'OR' searches on their help pages! The new system uses the pipe symbol (which also works the same way in Google):

volvo (rims | tires | wheels) -850 -740