How to search usenet for programming questions?

Question

I've been using usenet searches since about 1995 to get programming information, mostly for microsoft APIs. First searching via dejanews, and now google "groups" which bought out dejanews. Over the last few years I've noticed a steady decline in the quantity of search results for usenet from google, and today I find I'm completely unable to get a working usenet search on their advanced group search page. I'm used to searching on "microsoft." sometimes suplemented with "microsoft*" or "microsoft*". Just try to find a post from 1996-1998 time period on "database" in either the comp.* or microsoft.* hierarchies, and if you can do it, please show your search expression. There should 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=1999&as_drrb=b&sitesearch=

seems to work nicely... 994 results (no thousands but still...)

Answer 2

To VonC:

My url string using the US English page is:

http://groups.google.com/groups/search?hl=en&as_q=database&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&scoring=selected&lr=selected&as_sitesearch=&as_qdr=selected&as_drrb=b&as_mind=1&as_minm=1&as_miny=1999&as_maxd=1&as_maxm=1&as_maxy=1999&as_ugroup=microsoft*&as_usubject=&as_uauthors=&safe=off

and I still get 0 results. You may be using the French language page and that one is working. Please post the url for the search page where you entered the search terms. I probably won't be able to use the French form since I am in the US. This helps a lot, there may be a bug in the English search form. Merci.

Answer 3

It appears to be problem with the advanced search form. I can't get the one at http://groups.google.fr/advanced_search?hl=fr&q=&hl=fr& to work either. But I can use the basic form with "database group:microsoft*" and I get many results as expected.

Answer 4

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

returns 3,000 results

Answer 5

The advanced search isn't working for me either:

• Broken advanced search results URL

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

• Working advanced search results URL

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

Or actually, it's only partly working, since entering multiple comma-separated groups in the advanced search form (or using the group: search operator) doesn't quite work as expected and ends up adding all the words in the additional group names as search keywords too.

You could try learning Julian dates and use the daterange search operator:

• Search results using daterange: