My apologies if someone else may have asked this question. But, as I couldn't find it via search I'll call this a "super-meta question" :-)

I try to avoid asking duplicate questions. (Hopefully, most others are doing that, but, perhaps, not.) Sometimes, when I type my question, the search will display a matching (or similar) list. However, in most cases, it doesn't. When I search for a question separately (i.e. using the search box), it becomes very difficult to find a good match.

I assume that this is not as much a problem with our site but a general fault of Stack Exchange.

Can you offer some guidelines on how users can improve their searches on this site? Is there a way to search by both tag and some "keywords" combined? That may help a lot.


The help center includes tips on searching. But it's also oft-said that the "possible duplicates" list when you get after typing your question title produces better results than the built-in search, and sometimes I go straight to that. In other words, I'll start to ask a question (with no intention of actually completing it) just to get to that list of possible duplicates. There's a feature request somewhere on Meta.SE to make the regular search also use the logic in the ask-question search.

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