How Do You Find an Old Story on Patch?

Last week we received a question from a reader via email asking how she could find an article that was no longer on the front page of Merrimack, or for that matter any, Patch site.

She'd seen a poll over the weekend and wanted to take another look at the results, but didn't know where it disappeared to on Monday.

In the past, readers have asked how far back we archive articles. So in this week's installment of You Ask, Patch Answers is a good opportunity to help you find that article you heard about but never had a chance to read.

The answer to the second question, how far back do we archive, is simple. Day one. Merrimack Patch launched on June 17, 2011. Everything that has been written and posted to Merrimack Patch is still there.

Which begs the first question. How do you find it?

Everything on our site moves down in reverse chronological order for the most part, with the newest story appearing at the top of the page. If the story came from another section other than the news section meaning if it was a blog post, an announcement or event those items bounce onto the Local Voices, Announcements and Events sections once they no longer appear on the front page.

You could, if you were so inclined, scroll back through the pages, to look for something, though if it's more than a couple days old, that can get awfully tedious.

The best way to find a story is to search for it like you would search for anything on a search engine like Google or Bing. In the top right of our blue menu bar just to the right of "More Stuff" there is a lighter blue box with a magnifying glass. You can use that box to search, just like you would on a search engine. The more specific you make the search, the fewer results will come back.

Like search engines, putting two or more words in quotes will bring back results only with those words in that order. To use the example that came with the question last week, our reader was looking for our poll on whether marijuana should be legalized in New Hampshire. If she searched the word marijuana, any story with that word in it would come back. If she looked up should marijuana be legalized?, the search would be more specific and "legalize marijuana" would be even better.

If your search brings back a lot of hits, there are two options in the top right corner of your search results: "date" and "relevance" clicking "date" gives you a reverse chronological order of the stories, relevance is what the search finds most relevant to what you asked for.

Is your search bringing back nothing? Double check your spelling. Our search doesn't bring back suggestions for misspelled words like most search engines do. Still not finding results? It's possible we don't have a story about it.

Archived articles are only stored locally. So, an old story on Nashua Patch can only be found on Nashua Patch, while an old story on Merrimack Patch can only be found on Merrimack Patch.

Contact editor Carolyn Dube at carolyn.dube@patch.com if you have a question or are looking for something you think we had on the site but cannot find.