There's a question: [Show all of my question/answers to me even if they are deleted/closed](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2645/show-all-of-my-question-answers-to-me-even-if-they-are-deleted-closed)

I happened to (inadvertently) ask a duplicate of it: [How can I find my own deleted answers?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/31747/how-can-i-find-my-own-deleted-answers-closed)

My bug report is that the SO search is failing me. I realize search is non-trivial, but I'm still having trouble finding the duplicate question even now that I know it exists.

Here are some searches I tried before (and after) to find the duplicate question:

* [deleted answers](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=answers+deleted) -> no result has both search terms in the title, duplicate question does
* [question answers deleted closed](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=question+answers+deleted+closed) -> not one of the first 50 answers had more than 2 terms
* [Show all of my question answers to me even if they are deleted closed](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=Show+all+of+my+question+answers+to+me+even+if+they+are+deleted+closed) -> despite containing all of the words (/ omitted), the question doesn't show up in first 50 (didn't look past that)

A literal [cut/paste of the title](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=Show+all+of+my+question%2Fanswers+to+me+even+if+they+are+deleted%2Fclosed) does result in a match for the question (first result!), but if you look at what is actually being searched for, you see the terms `Show questionanswers even deletedclosed`. Apparently the `/` is removed.

Which leads me to the two terms that actually resulted in the match: [`show even`](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=show+even).

Again, I understand search is hard, but some ideas popped to mind:

* perhaps some more weight could be added to matches in titles.
* Perhaps the search box could replace `/` with a space instead of concatenating the two terms.
* Perhaps searches could include pluralized/singularized words, and different conjugations of verbs (close/closed).

---

Continuing to play with the search terms:

* [question answer deleted closed](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=question+answer+deleted+closed) -> first match is a hit
* [question answers deleted closed](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=question+answers+deleted+closed) -> no match in first 50 b/c of auto conversion of 'answers' to the tag

Sure, auto-conversion is handy, but in this case (and I'm guessing many others - not on meta), it makes it very difficult to actually find this question.

So I didn't notice the tag conversion before, which is probably what caused my initial queries to fail, still

* [deleted answer](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/search?q=deleted+answer) -> the duplicate doesn't show up in the first 30 questions (only matched the word 'deleted'

Anyway, just some frustrations with the search lately and this one stood out the most. These appear to be related questions, though I think this question is oriented at finding duplicate questions, which is different than the general "find my search terms"

Related:
- [How do I make search return results that actually contain all the search terms?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14898/how-do-i-make-search-return-results-that-actually-contain-all-the-search-terms),
- [Match all terms search feature](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/23296/match-all-terms-search-feature)
- [Automatic question title search fail](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/30929/automatic-question-title-search-fail) 

[How do I make search return results that actually contain all the search terms?](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/14898/how-do-i-make-search-return-results-that-actually-contain-all-the-search-terms)

(I'm really hoping I didn't miss the duplicate for this, perhaps I'm just bad at using search).