If you enjoy reading old postings; here's a reference on how to
refine your questions in groups.google.com search string box;

https://support.google.com/groups/answer/2371405?hl=en

it mentions search terms such as
{note: these all return just the thread header, so open each 'hit' to see the
matching message(s); may need to scroll up to correct msg in thread}
after:yyyy/mm/dd like 2011/2/3
before:yyyy/mm/dd like 2014/3/4
author:"joe blow" {or author:me works, while logged in to google}
{ here @ or space requires surrounding " " marks.
I can never get it to work anyway if @ is in author name, maybe
is a utf-8 keyboard problem, as the .... is possibly not lower 7bit ascii}
authorname:"frank winans" matches *frank winans*
exactauthorname:"joe bob" that must be their whole name
has:attachment
is:firstpost means is first message of the thread
-is:firstpost means is not first message of thread
is:sticky means moderator forced this to top of listing
subject:shoes matches *shoes* in name of the discussion thread
subject:"my shoes" matches *my shoes* {need " " if space or # present}
(warning, by itself, subject:stuff
returns a 'hit' on just the whole thread, versus a
particular message in that {possibly enormous} thread.
groupname:"google calendar" (looks in descriptive name of group)
group:comp.databases.pick (this, the defunct pick group)
group:mvdbms (results from the new live pick group)

so for example go to groups.google.com and type in this
group:comp.databases.pick

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forumsearch/mvdbms
presents a search box pre-narrowed-down to the new pick group, versus https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forumsearch/comp.databases.pick
ditto but for the old defunct nntp newsgroup here.

I am not able to reproduce it, but did manage once to browse to https://groups.google.com/forum/#!search/authormsg$3Acomp.databases.pick$2Cdv61j21f_mkJ$20chain
though as seen in search box
authormsg:comp.databases.pick,dv61j21f_mkJ chain
but this form is not mentioned in the support.google.com page cited above.

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