How to Find Reddit Posts
Posts are the part of Reddit that search actually handles well. Use the title operator for the headline, the subreddit operator to narrow the pool, and the author operator when you know who posted it. If nothing comes back, change the sort order before assuming the post is gone.
Step by step
Search the title, not your memory of the post
Reddit indexes post titles best. Use the title: operator with a distinctive word from the headline rather than describing what the post was about.
Narrow to the subreddit
Add subreddit:name to cut the result pool down. Write subreddit:cats, never subreddit:r/cats, which is the most common reason this returns nothing.
Search by author when you know who posted it
author:username returns posts by that account. Combine it with a subreddit operator to find one person's posts in one community.
Work through the sort orders
Reddit returns roughly 1,000 items per sort order. New, top of all time and controversial each surface a different slice, so check more than one before concluding a post is missing.
Fall back to Google
A site:reddit.com search finds posts by words in the comments as well as the title, which helps when you remember the discussion better than the headline.
Check archives for removed posts
A post showing as [removed] often still exists in a public archive with its original title and body. Recovery depends on whether it was captured before removal.
Example queries
author:spez subreddit:announcementsEverything one account posted in one community.subreddit:askcarsales title:"extended warranty"A phrase in the headline, inside one subreddit. Quotes are required for multi-word values.site:reddit.com "that exact sentence"A Google search, which reaches comment text that Reddit search cannot.
Tips
- Pick the most unusual word in the title. Common words drown in a capped result set.
- Narrowing to a subreddit does more for result quality than any other single change.
- Sort by top of all time when hunting something old and popular; sort by new when hunting something recent and obscure.
- If the account is what you actually care about, searching its post history directly runs every sort order in one pass.
Common mistakes
- Writing subreddit:r/name. Drop the r/ or the filter matches nothing.
- Searching what the post was about rather than what it was called. Reddit matches title words, not your summary of the topic.
- Reading one sort order as the whole history. The cap applies per sort, not per account.
- Expecting author: to return comments. It never does.
Frequently asked questions
- How do I find all posts by a Reddit user?
- Open their profile and read the posts tab, then repeat across sort orders, and search author:username in Reddit search. Each returns items the others miss because of the per-sort item cap.
- Why can't I find a post I know exists?
- Usually the sort order. Reddit caps listings at roughly 1,000 items each, so an older post can sit outside the slice you are looking at. It may also have been removed, or posted in a subreddit that has since gone private.
- Can I search Reddit posts by date?
- Reddit lets you filter results by time period rather than by an exact date range. Narrowing to a subreddit first makes the time filter considerably more useful.
- How do I find a deleted Reddit post?
- Check a public archive. If the post was captured before deletion, its original title and body may still be readable there, though nothing is guaranteed.
- Does the author operator find comments too?
- No. author: matches posts only. To find someone's comments you have to browse their comment history, because Reddit does not index comment text at all.
Or run every sort order against one account in a single search.
Search a user's posts