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Forum Thread

What happened to "Title Only" search option?

2,008 584 April 16, 2025 at 01:44 PM
If I do a search from the main search bar at the top of the page, there is no longer a filter option to search in the title only (versus title and first post). If I go into the forums and do a search, the option is still shown but doesn't do anything. For example, a search for "printer filament" in Hot Deals shows 75 results by default, including not just filament but also printers. If I select Title Only in the filters, it still shows 75 results even though many/most don't have "filament' in the title. I don't think I'm doing anything wrong; it's the same way I've searched since joining the site 15+ years ago.

Is this feature intentionally gone but just not hidden everywhere? If so, WHY??? Searches are SO much less helpful if I can't constrain the search terms to titles only.
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brossow
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TracyH1290
04-17-2025 at 02:56 PM.
04-17-2025 at 02:56 PM.
I noticed this as well. Not only is it missing in the UI from the left menu, it doesn't seem to work anymore when appending '&searchin=title' to the URL.

Trying to search for 'IPhone Unlocked' returns too many unrelated results without the Title Only option.
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sans.
04-30-2025 at 06:10 AM.
04-30-2025 at 06:10 AM.
Noticed this myself when searching for 'mac mini' I get a bunch of returned results that are partial matches only.
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leefy20
04-30-2025 at 05:47 PM.
04-30-2025 at 05:47 PM.
Yeah, something changed again in the last couple days, I can't accurately search for sweepstakes by expiration date anymore, such as searching for "4/30" or "5/1"
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Joined Sep 2007
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biggiesteve
05-02-2025 at 01:12 PM.
05-02-2025 at 01:12 PM.
Quote from leefy20 :
Yeah, something changed again in the last couple days, I can't accurately search for sweepstakes by expiration date anymore, such as searching for "4/30" or "5/1"
Agreed. It's been like that for a few days now.
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Joined Apr 2013
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emceep | Staff
05-07-2025 at 11:30 AM.
05-07-2025 at 11:30 AM.
Quote from brossow :
If I do a search from the main search bar at the top of the page, there is no longer a filter option to search in the title only (versus title and first post). If I go into the forums and do a search, the option is still shown but doesn't do anything. For example, a search for "printer filament" in Hot Deals shows 75 results by default, including not just filament but also printers. If I select Title Only in the filters, it still shows 75 results even though many/most don't have "filament' in the title. I don't think I'm doing anything wrong; it's the same way I've searched since joining the site 15+ years ago.

Is this feature intentionally gone but just not hidden everywhere? If so, WHY??? Searches are SO much less helpful if I can't constrain the search terms to titles only.
Quote from leefy20 :
Yeah, something changed again in the last couple days, I can't accurately search for sweepstakes by expiration date anymore, such as searching for "4/30" or "5/1"
Quote from biggiesteve :
Agreed. It's been like that for a few days now.
Thank you for taking the time to report these issues. Site search has been going through a lot of changes recently, and I know these changes can be annoying and inconvenient, but the team is still actively working on fixing issues. There are tickets in the works that should hopefully address both of these concerns once they get released.

Quote from TracyH1290 :
I noticed this as well. Not only is it missing in the UI from the left menu, it doesn't seem to work anymore when appending '&searchin=title' to the URL.

Trying to search for 'IPhone Unlocked' returns too many unrelated results without the Title Only option.
For now, please try putting quotes around each word ("iphone" "unlocked") and see if that provides more relevant results.

Quote from sans. :
Noticed this myself when searching for 'mac mini' I get a bunch of returned results that are partial matches only.
For now, please try putting quotes around it ("mac mini") and see if that provides more relevant results.
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WhipperSnapper
05-12-2025 at 05:40 AM.
05-12-2025 at 05:40 AM.
Came here to express the same concern. I would hate to see Slickdeals search become as awful as Amazon's search functionality.
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avhokie
05-13-2025 at 05:21 AM.
05-13-2025 at 05:21 AM.
Please fix this
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FabulousSeed964
05-18-2025 at 08:23 PM.
05-18-2025 at 08:23 PM.
Agreed. Sites like this become largely worthless if search is broken. My "advanced" searches no longer work properly. My deal alerts are having similar problems. This is especially true when trying to use @title. Try this search and notice the granola bars that come back: nvidia 4060|4070 @title -refurb*
There are other operators besides @title that are not doing what they are supposed to...

Basically, all of the functionality explained here needs to come back and be tested to make sure it works: https://slickdeals.net/forums/showpost.php?p=67718300&postcount=540
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leefy20
05-27-2025 at 02:39 PM.
05-27-2025 at 02:39 PM.
This still appears to be broken at least for me using the website on desktop.
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emceep | Staff
05-30-2025 at 05:06 PM.
05-30-2025 at 05:06 PM.
Quote from leefy20 :
This still appears to be broken at least for me using the website on desktop.
Thank you for reporting this - The team is going to continue to work on title search.
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CyanPencil512
06-08-2025 at 05:57 PM.
06-08-2025 at 05:57 PM.
Hi, I noticed something was 'different' or 'off' with search as of the last few weeks as well. In my case I see the problems reported above, but also, I used to be able to do a fairly complex 'OR' search using the pipe character like this:

Code:
kobalt|Ridgid|m12|m18|Ryobi
This broke a few months ago, I was going to report it then, but then the issue seemed 'fixed' so I left it alone. But now it's come back, seemingly timed with the issues reported in this and another thread.

Do you know if this kind of complex search will be supported again once the search issues are resolved? This was a very powerful and useful feature.

Thanks!
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Joined Apr 2013
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emceep | Staff
06-09-2025 at 10:19 AM.
06-09-2025 at 10:19 AM.
Quote from CyanPencil512 :
Hi, I noticed something was 'different' or 'off' with search as of the last few weeks as well. In my case I see the problems reported above, but also, I used to be able to do a fairly complex 'OR' search using the pipe character like this:

Code:
kobalt|Ridgid|m12|m18|Ryobi
This broke a few months ago, I was going to report it then, but then the issue seemed 'fixed' so I left it alone. But now it's come back, seemingly timed with the issues reported in this and another thread.

Do you know if this kind of complex search will be supported again once the search issues are resolved? This was a very powerful and useful feature.

Thanks!
There are definitely still issues to be worked out overall, but as far as I am aware, there are no plans to stop supporting 'OR' | searches.
I reported your specific issue to the team. While they look into this issue, it seems like if you remove the m12|m18 part from your search, you can at least get more accurate results. I'm not sure if there will be too many irrelevant results for you, but you may want to consider swapping them out for Milwaukee instead.
kobalt|Ridgid|Milwaukee|Ryobi
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SlySol
06-09-2025 at 03:48 PM.
06-09-2025 at 03:48 PM.
Quote from emceep :
Thank you for taking the time to report these issues. Site search has been going through a lot of changes recently, and I know these changes can be annoying and inconvenient, but the team is still actively working on fixing issues. There are tickets in the works that should hopefully address both of these concerns once they get released.
Another incredibly useful feature seems to have disappeared as a search option lately. I used to be able to click on a user's profile (yours, mine, etc) and then click "posts" to view all of a user's posts and then search within those posts for a particular word simply by adding that word to the search box on that page. Now, that no longer works. For instance, you use the word "swapping" at one point on this page. I used to be able to view your posts and then search for the word "swapping" and any comment where you used that word would show up. It was incredibly useful for searching old issues. Like if I knew that I had posted previously about unlocking an iPhone, I could search my own posts for "unlock" and find all those comments throughout the years at a glance on a single search page and help point someone in the right direction if they were looking for that info months later. I must have used that functionality hundreds of times and it was soooo useful. I really hope that returns. This was in the Classic view and another nice feature of that search is that you could see the word in a small segment of the original text for context so it was easy to see exactly which comment you were looking for.
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Last edited by SlySol June 9, 2025 at 04:01 PM.
Joined Apr 2013
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emceep | Staff
06-09-2025 at 04:18 PM.
06-09-2025 at 04:18 PM.
Thank you for describing this so well, as well as your personal use case for it. I have shared your comment with the team so that they can look into this.
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