Suppose Ann Able adds a comment about Yosemite Falls to a post that Bob Baker puts on Google+ asking about places to hike and camp in California. Later on Ann wants to find that comment. If Ann remembers it was Bob who made the post, she can go into Bob's profile and look through his posts until she finds the one that includes her comment. But suppose Ann doesn't remember who made the original post -- is there a way she can search Google+ to find her comment? Yes there is, provided that Bob's post was public. Using the Google search engine, Ann can enter a query that looks like this:
site:plus.google.com "Ann Able" "Yosemite Falls"
This will result in a search across all public posts on Google+ for those that include Ann's name and the keywords she provided. The search results will show a list of all the public posts and profile pages (a) that people named Ann Able have created, commented on or shared, and (b) that also include the phrase "Yosemite Falls." If that's a short list, Ann should be able to find her comment easily.
This same technique can be used to search for public posts and comments on a specific topic. For example, if Ann is interested in what people are saying in public posts on Google+ about earthquakes, she might use the search query:
site:plus.google.com "earthquake"
Going back to the original example, suppose Ann wants to look at all the comments she's made on Bob's public posts. So she tries this:
site:plus.google.com "Ann Able" "Bob Baker"
This gives her a listing of all posts and profile pages throughout Google+ that somewhere include the names Ann Able and Bob Baker. Suppose this turns out to be a long list, in part because there are other people named Ann Able and Bob Baker. Ann can narrow her search to the posts and profile page of the Bob Baker she knows by using Bob's ID number rather than his name. To find that number, Ann need only look at the URL for any of Bob's posts or Bob's profile page; the ID number appears in the URL immediately after https://plus.google.com/.
For understandable reasons, these techniques only work for public posts. Posts that are shared on a limited basis cannot be found in this way, even by those with whom the post was shared. In the future, Google may provide a way for Google+ users to search both the public and the private posts that have entered their stream, or all the posts they have made, or all the posts they have commented on. At this time, however, I'm not aware of any way to do these things.
For understandable reasons, these techniques only work for public posts. Posts that are shared on a limited basis cannot be found in this way, even by those with whom the post was shared. In the future, Google may provide a way for Google+ users to search both the public and the private posts that have entered their stream, or all the posts they have made, or all the posts they have commented on. At this time, however, I'm not aware of any way to do these things.
