How to search usenet for programming questions?

Question

I have been using usenet search since 1995 to get programming information, mainly for Microsoft APIs. The first search is through dejanews, and now google is the “group” that dejanews bought out. Over the past few years, I have noticed a steady decrease in the number of search results for usenet from google, and today I find that I can’t completely get a working user search on the extended group search page. I'm used to looking for "microsoft. *", Sometimes complemented by "microsoft" or "microsoft *". Just try to find the message from 1996-1998 in the "database" in the comp * or microsoft hierarchy. * And if you can do this, please show your search expression. There must be thousands of results.

Answer 1

http://groups.google.com/groups/search?safe=off&q=database+group%3Amicrosoft * & btnG = Rechercher & as_mind = 1 & as_minm = 1 & as_miny = 1996 & as_maxd = 1 & as_maxm = 1 & as_maxy = 1,999 & as_drrb = b & SiteSearch =

seems to work well ... 994 results (thousands, but still ...)

Answer 2

This is a problem with the advanced search form. I cannot get http://groups.google.fr/advanced_search?hl=fr&q=&hl=fr& to work. But I can use the basic form with "database group: microsoft *" and I get a lot of results as expected.

Answer 3

http://www.google.ca/groups/search?safe=off&q=database+group%3Acomp . * & btnG = Search & sitesearch =

returns 3000 results

Answer 4

Advanced search does not work for me:

• Bad Search Results URL

However, removing lr = selected from the query string in this url makes it work for some reason:

• Working with advanced URL search results

In fact, clicking the search button again on the broken advanced search results page will return those results for me as well.

Or, in fact, it works only partially, because entering several comma-separated groups in the advanced search form (or using the group: search operator) does not work as expected, and ends adding all the words in the additional group as well as the search keywords .

You can try Julian dates and use the daterange search operator :

• Search results using daterange: