How do I search drupal.org?

If a basic drupal.org search does not return the result you are looking for, or it brings back too many results, here are some tips that can help improve the results:

Limit your search

On the right sidebar of every search, you will see several blocks allowing you to refine your search (by type, by author) and reorder the results. You can also browse projects on the project download page.

Set up a Firefox search shortcut

Firefox allows you to add custom search shortcuts, so you can directly type your search in the Firefox address bar.

Here is an example to setup a shortcut for searching the Drupal modules.

1. Go to drupal.org, search a module using the 'Search downloads' block or you can click on this link to search 'views'.
2. Bookmark the result page
3. Open your browser's bookmark manager. Find the bookmark you just created. Change the properties of the bookmark as following:
1. Give it a keyword name, you can pick any letter or phrase as you want to use for this shortcut. In this example, we will use 'dpm' for Drupal module search
2. In location/url, replace your search term ('views' in this example) with %s.
4. Now you have successfully defined a 'Drupal module search' shortcut. Next time you want to search for a Drupal module, you can simply type 'dpm searchterm' in the Firefox address bar.

Below are some other useful shortcuts, the search term has been replaced with %s, so you can directly copy/paste it.

Drupal 6.x API search

http://api.drupal.org/api/search/6/%s

Drupal 5.x API search

http://api.drupal.org/api/search/5/%s

Search 6.x handbook pages

http://drupal.org/search/node/type:book+category:102+%s

Search 5.x handbook pages

http://drupal.org/search/node/type:book+category:77+%s

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Other topics that need to be completed:
creating links to advanced searches with the specific criteria you want
how to make a Firefox search shortcut to d.o search (partially done, may need more examples.)
use Google to search (site:drupal.org your keyword(s) here)
For issues, use the Advanced search feature to hone in on exactly the information you want. Right-click the feed icon and remove /feed from the URL, and you have a handy-dandy bookmarkable page.