Google Help

A gazillion questions (give or take a few) are asked -- and answered -- each day. Here are a few tips on sifting through the posts to find the ones that interest you:

Search for your answer.

Chances are that your question has been asked before. Save some time and enter a few keywords in the search box at the top of the page to search for relevant posts and help articles.

Sort and filter questions.

Say you only want to see questions that have been marked as answered or those that have a lot of replies: navigate into a discussion category and use the Display drop-down menu at the top of the discussion category pages to further filter posts. Questions can be sorted by recent activity, date asked, popularity. The latest posts appear first on the category pages.

Be aware of member levels, Best Answers, Popular Answers and votes on posts.

For a question that has multiple replies, don't waste time reading every single reply. Look for posts that have been marked as 'Answered,' or as helpful by other people and that include comments from 'Top Contributors' (these folks know a lot about Google products).

Do you like someone's reply? Spread the word by clicking Yes for 'Did you find this answer helpful?' that appears at the bottom of each post. Your vote may contribute to this reply becoming a 'Popular Answer.'

If you asked a question, you can designate a response as a 'Best Answer.' Topic Contributors and Google Guides can also designate responses as 'Best Answers.'

Track replies for interesting questions.

Here are some tips for keeping track of questions and replies:

• Sign in properly. Make sure you're signed into the Google Account associated with your Google Help profile.


• Get email alerts when someone replies to a question.
  Follow these steps to receive email alerts:
  1. Click the question you'd like to track.
  2. Select the "Email me when people reply" checkbox in the Subscribe area.
  3. Click Save.
  To stop receiving emails for a particular question, go to one of the emails and click Unsubscribe from answers to this question at the bottom of the email.


• Subscribe to the category and/or question feeds. Every category and question has a feed. These feeds update automatically whenever there's new information posted. Add the question's feed to the feed reader of your choice (such as Google Reader). When people reply to the thread, their messages will appear in your feed reader. To add a feed, click the feed link at the top of the category or question.


• Bookmark posts with stars. Give gold stars to the posts that catch your attention. Then go to your personal 'Starred Discussions' page at any time to revisit these conversations. Simply click the star that appears next to the post title. You can get to the Starred Discussion page by clicking the Starred link on the left side of the page. Note that each forum has a separate Starred Discussions page, which means that posts that you track on one forum won't show up in the Starred Discussions page for another.