You’ve been buying and selling on your local Used.ca site for ages. You know how to browse, and how to search, but do you know all the tricks? Below are a few advanced searching techniques that you can use to improve your search results and make life easier.

• & (and)

Place the “&” symbol in between two keywords to only search for ads that contain both of your keywords.

 

Ex. If I want to find a Honda Civic, I could search “Honda & Civic” to narrow my search results.

 

• | (or)

Place the “|” symbol in between two keywords to search for ads that contain either the first keyword, or the second keyword.

 

Ex. If I want to buy a Honda, but I don’t care whether it’s a Civic or an Accord, I could search “Honda & (Civic | Accord)” to list all of the ads that contain the word “Honda,” and either the word “Civic” or “Accord.” Note that this statement is surrounded by brackets.

 

• ! (not)

Place the “!” symbol in front of a keyword to search for ads that do not contain that keyword.

 

Ex. If I want to search for a Honda, but I don’t want to wade through a bunch of ads that are selling Honda car parts, I could search “Honda & !parts” to browse all of the ads that contain the word “Honda” and do not contain the word “parts.”

 

 

Ad filtering

 

You also have the option to filter certain types of ads out of your search. Once you have chosen your category (in this case, I’ve chosen the “Automobiles & Other Vehicles” category) you will see this on your screen:

 

 

Click on “Show advanced options >>” to see all of the options available to you. In the image below, I’m searching for a Honda in Victoria. Note that I’ve clicked on “Offered only” so that I will not see any wanted ads. I’ve also checked “Hide commercial sellers” so that only private sellers will show up in my search results.

 

 

There you go! Try out these technique in your next search and see how much time you save. Hope you find them useful.

 

-Michael