You Can Search For Comments

I’m not sure why, but a lot of readers don’t seem to realize that it’s possible to search comments on an individual page. This option is located just below the comment form on each page (see screenshot below).

You can also change the sort by from ‘newest’ to ‘oldest’ to show comments that were posted first. There is also an option to subscribe to comments without adding a comment (under ‘Subscribe’). Comment search can be incredibly useful so hopefully this post helps some readers.

View Comments (51)

  • I didn’t know we could search and sort comments until reading the discussion recently about the site redesign.
    But yeah, both are extremely useful.

  • I've always just done CTRL-F, but this is better because sometimes comments get collapsed, and CTRL-F won't find those comments.

    Also, I've only searched for my name in comments on referral threads to make sure I don't double-post a my referral. I just tried searching for a name on the comment search box, and it does work searching for names.

  • The feature you removed that I miss most is the ability to see the most recent comments to threads. It was helpful to know where users were communicating and on what topics. If someone comments on an aged article, users won't see it unless they search for the topic which means less discussion overall. Maybe I missed the reason you removed the feature but I'd like to see it back. @will @chucksithe

  • Wow! I feel dumb. I always load the comments all up and then use the find on the browser to look for key words. Lol Thanks

  • It probably has to do with how it's displayed on mobile. The magnifying glass is way to the left and looks like a button that just doesn't do anything, and on the right, the word "search" is not visible (just "Comment"). For the longest time, I thought it was either an old version of the comment box, or a search function that didn't work.

  • Can you also add a feature to load all comments at once? There are a few times I would rather prefer doing Ctrl+f than use search comment feature.

    • Load all instead of load more causes significant server load issues. Some pages have like 5k comments. You can't set what pages have load more vs load all unfortunately

      • Why does the app say "no comments" have been made when 1000 comments have been made? I literally cannot see not only my comment history but the history of others as well?

    • Yeah, same. I don't know if there's any such option, though. Last I heard, it's a single decision of load-all or load-some for the entire site, and I'm not sure there's any plugin or the like that can be added for a load-all feature on each page.