Finding a Group

Instead of finding information in many groups, you may simply want to find a group that interests you. On the left side of the Google Groups home page, click the My Groups link. In the Find a group search box, type a topic and click Search for a group. The results first display topics that pertain to your search term. Next to each topic is a number in parentheses indicating the number of groups found related to that topic. The number also may represent several possible subgroups, each containing several possible groups.

Clicking any of these topics allows you to focus your search by navigating down a particular hierarchy of groups until you find the group or groups that interest you.

There may be several group topics that contain your search term. For example, searching on Ventura can bring up groups that focus on Ventura Publishing, a software package, or Ventura, California, and whatever else that could share the term, even Ace Ventura, Pet Detective. If you are searching for software, then you want to focus on the topics that deal with computers.

In addition to topics, the result page also displays languages that you can choose. Groups listed under this heading are in the language you select. You also can choose the level of activity the group experiences. It’s not very interesting to join a group that sees one post a year, so you probably want to choose groups with higher levels of activity. The levels include:

• High

• Medium

• Low

Just like activity levels, you may want to see groups that have a certain number of members posting messages. You can select groups with higher numbers of members by selecting one of the links in the Members section showing the minimum number of members; 100+, 10-100, and less than 10.

The list of groups appears in the next section of the results page. If you are curious as to why a particular group is included, click the Show matching messages from this group link next to the group name and see the messages that match your search term.

Also shown in the results for each group is the following information: the category, the group language, the level of activity, the number of subscribers, and whether it is a Usenet or Google group. Some groups show that they are restricted. This means that you must get permission from the group moderator before you can participate in the group.