Before anyone asks, I know we have all seen countless number of threads that are duplicates, or are slight variations of the threads we have all seen before. If you are a newer member, I understand that you want to ask a question, and you want to ask it fast, but if you follow these simple guidelines you'll be making it easier on yourself and the community. Here are some questions asked about the Search Feature:

"I used the Search Feature but nothing came up!"

Instead of typing exactly what you think a thread might be called, try typing particular words that might be in that thread.

Instead of typing "Martyrdom Rant don't use this", try typing "Martyrdom rant perk cheating". When you use words that are bound to be found in the thread about Martyrdom ranting, the thread will be more likely to show up. Words like the, don't, have, your, haha, etc. will not return the threads you are looking for.

"There is no need to use it, this thread hasn't been made yet!"

Don't be too sure. There are 21,000 members on here, and many of them posting at least 10+ times a week. If you've searched the proper way, then go look in the appropriate section (PS3, Xbox 360, PC, General Discussion) and scroll through the last couple pages to see if you can find what you are looking for, then you can make a new thread if you must.

"It's too hard to distinguish between all the threads that come up! I'm confuzzled!"

It will be hard, big threads like the Official Your Classes thread will have a ton of keywords in them, even when searching for particular words, that thread will come up almost every time. Just take your time when looking and don't hurry.

I hope this "Guide" will help some newer members understand the Search Feature a tiny bit better, and make less of the same duplicate threads. If not then I'm sorry, I tried.

If you want me to add to the list of what I have, please comment, constructive criticism welcome.

Dubbs has made some points to help out more, here they are:

Haha. Perfect just what we needed.

Now lets hope people will follow

Um.....shoutbox? I was almost certain you would say that as number 1.

I rofl'd when I saw this.

Props to SRH!

The best guide I have seen since ViS sniping guide

I'm pretty sure I am on like day 85 of repping you. But when I can, +1

Some other suggestions. When searching for something, you can also use an * as a wild card. For example,

apple*

This will return apples, applepie, or anything that starts with apple. This is helpful if you think a search term may not be spelt incorrectly, or if there are other ways people may type the word. An example of this is if someone was to type iw3mp but you searched for iw3mp.exe. By using the * you would return both search terms.

Also, useing quotes lets you search for exact phrases.

"I hate martyrdom"

This should search the site for just post that have I hate maryrdom as stated in the quotes.

Boolean search terms.

I am not 100% for sure on this on, but boolean search terms maybe used. You may be asking what are Boolean search terms, they are AND, NOT, OR. What does this mean? It means the following:

Call NOT Duty will return everything with Call but if it has Call and Duty it will not be returned.
Call OR Duty will return everything with Call or Duty in it.
Call AND Duty will return everything with Call and Duty in it.

EDIT:

Something I forgot, if you want a better search tool then what the site has, use Google. This is not a joke, when doing a search for something, but you just want to search on this site use "site: cod4forums.com". This will search only cod4forums.com for your search term. Here is an example of the search:

martyrdom site:cod4forums.com

If you were to do this search via Google, you wold return eleven pages of post that are just from this site.

I cant seem to find this thread by searching for it

lmao.