How to label search terms to stand out in Blogger blog?

July 1, 2024 8:22 AM

I have a Blogger blog and I want to make searching for a surname easy. So I labeled #Skaggs for a book that contained the Skaggs surname but when I went to search to test it, the search came back all posts with the word Skaggs not just the one post with #Skaggs

How can I make this easier. I suppose I could label a book surnameSkaggs (surnameSkaggs, surnameSmith, surnameJones) but that seems klunky.
Is there a more elegant way to do this?
Trying to show a certain book mentioned in a blog post contains the surname Skaggs, not trying to search for every blog post that contains Skaggs.

posted by cda to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

The search returned exactly what you asked for, which is every example of the word "Skaggs".

If you want to search just for labels you need to use the "label" command in the search, so "label : Skaggs" will return every post with a label of #Skaggs.
posted by underclocked at 10:22 AM on July 1

Response by poster: I have not explained this very well. I am sorry.

I don't want to search for every incidence of the surname Skaggs in my blog, there are many. I just want to search for books with a mention of Skaggs.

So for this book
History of Longhunters in Virginia by Joe Smith (example - not a real book!)
#Skaggs
History of Longhunters in West Virginia
#Harman

I have noted that this book contains a mention of a Skaggs but when I go to search #Skaggs I get every blog post mentioning Skaggs, not just the one blog post where I have written #Skaggs.

I have learned that Blogger, Evernote and Google ignore # in a search.

So what is an alternative that is not klunky? And hopefully academic because I am looking to get certified as a genealogist and I want my work to be perfect.

maybe I am stuck with something like surnameSkaggs
posted by cda at 11:52 AM on July 1

Did you label the post itself, or did you just type #Skaggs inside of the regular post text? If you make it a label, then you should be able to use a url like this:

www.yourblogURlhere.com/search/label/label+Name

If you use a label, you should then end up with line in your post footer that says Labels: Skaggs

Here is a random example of a blog post with labels on it.
posted by soelo at 12:26 PM on July 1

I blog on blogspot which was subsumed by blogger a while back. I just added a #farming to a recent post and entered #farming in the search box. This generates a URL
https://blobthescientist.blogspot.com/search?q=%23farming which finds what I am looking for
https://blobthescientist.blogspot.com/search?q=#farming finds nothing
so maybe talk ascii in your query and all will be well?
. . . or use a different symbol instead of the # . . . Σ for surname works for me
posted by BobTheScientist at 1:05 PM on July 1

Response by poster: I'm using labels for broad categories. I can't really use labels for surnames because I research hundreds of surnames.

But thank you soelo and underclocked for helping me out.

In Evernote searching for #Skaggs will ignore # and return every incidence of Skaggs. BUT I can make a tag #Skaggs and if I search my tags #Skaggs will come up. So that works.

I guess the problem with Blogger is it will list every label I create in that list on the right. If I have hundreds of surnames it is going to be unwieldly.

I'm going to test Σ
brb
posted by cda at 1:09 PM on July 1

Response by poster: OK, the symbol Σ worked just fine
thank you Bob the Scientist, and everyone else

and if you have anything to add please do! What are other people doing to solve this predicament? If there is a standard I'd like to know!
posted by cda at 1:12 PM on July 1