Make sure you don't type too many words or you'll get every thread that has one of those words. And it's good to put the word you want in quotes as Sassygirl pointed out, but even that can be tricky.
For instance, if I'm looking for CAT, I have to write "cat". What that does, is tell the Search function to look for everywhere that those letters appear together. But that's a bad choice because they appear together in CATholic CATalyst sCATter... so if I'm looking for the animal CAT I'm more likely to find it if I type "CAT " leaving a space after the word but before the second quotes. Also, I have to know where I expect the thread to appear and specify the appropriate forum by highlighting so as to limit the results that are returned.
Another example, if you're looking for information on "APPLE CIDER VINEGAR RINSE", you could find it by typing "ACV Rinse" if you know it's also called that. But if you didn't know the acronym, then you have to decide which word is less likely to appear in a different topic and use that. If you typed, without quotes, APPLE CIDER VINEGAR RINSE, you might get so many topics that mention each of those words, especially RINSE...even sth so out of topic like "and then I rinsed off the shampoo." But if you instead picked a word like "VINEGAR" and put it in quotes on its own, you might find it on the Off Topic under food discussion or under ACV rinse. So this is where specifying where to search ie Hair Discussion forum can help. If that doesn't work, try "APPLE" or "CIDER" again specifying you want the search to take place in the Hair Discussion forum, coz it's very unlikely those words will appear in too many topics that aren't ACV except perhaps shampoo scents or ingredients.
There's also one last thing that could help. Sometimes specifying that you want the word to appear only in SUBJECT and not subject and body might get you the most relevant topics. For instance, a thread that has DANDRUFF in the subject will have more info related to Dandruff than one that has it in the body. Coz if it appears in the body, it may just be that someone made a comment on a totally different subject (eg about the weather) about how snow looked like dandruff to her five year old.
One more thing... If you have an inkling when the topic you are looking for was discussed, you can then specify how many months ago the topic is to be searched. But you usually only need to resort to this if you're getting too many relevant threads that aren't the specific one you know you want.
Sorry that was long but hope it helped.
