Fun with live web search macros

I was playing with search macros in live.com and was amazed at what we can do with those. In past I could not search for keywords only in MSDN forums specific to VSTS. If I did a search in web, then my results had non-forum stuff as well, which was a clutter. Now I created a search macro to do exactly that https://microsoftgadgets.com/forums/7153/ShowPost.aspx . The macro is shared, so just add "macro:naren.vsts" at end of keywords in live.com search and the results are scoped to only VSTS forums. It is possible because of macros functinality in live.com and meta tags in forums.

I can also do complex queries like "show me all unanswered questions in WorkItemTracking forum" and also add it live.com as an RSS feed to check unanswered questions whenever I go to live home page! Doing queries like getting all questions answered by me is trivial. I have a tool now that will show me results of keywords from VSTS forums, msdn (by appending site:msdn.microsoft.com at end of query), both search.msn.com & google in separate windows - comes handy when searching for an answer.

Joe has a tool posted here to construct complex queries and links to building live.com macros

Comments

• Anonymous
  August 02, 2006
  Your link
  http://www.live.com/q=site%3Aforums.microsoft.com meta%3ASearch.MSForums.ForumID(479) meta%3ASearch.MSForums.IsAnswered(0)&offset=1#ttp://www.live.com/q=site%3Aforums.microsoft.com%20meta%3ASearch.MSForums.ForumID(479)%20meta%3ASearch.MSForums.IsAnswered(0)&offset=1
  
  Is not working.
• Anonymous
  August 02, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  August 02, 2006
  It does work for me when I paste the link. There is a missing # sign in your comment before "q=", and after fixing it if I place it in addressbar of IE6, it works. I agree that it is sometimes slow.
• Anonymous
  March 19, 2008
  PingBack from http://cityjokesblog.info/narens-blog-fun-with-live-web-search-macros/