Ask HN: How do I find out whether something was submitted?

[apotheon]

I'd like to be able to find out whether a specific Webpage was already submitted without having to submit it myself in the process. Is there some mechanism for doing that here?

[mbrubeck]

It's not perfect, but you can go to http://searchyc.com/ and (on the results page) choose "submissions". Sometimes a domain-only search is good (if the topic you're looking for has a unique domain), other times you'll need to come up with some combination of domain and title keywords.

Or you can do a Google search with "site:" and "link:" like http://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com+l...

[sharpn]

there's a 'HNSearch' icon at the bottom-right of your screen :o)

[apotheon]

Does it somehow allow me to search by target URL for the headline link?

[sarvesh]

HN automatically redirects you to the page if the link was already submitted. This works most of the time. If you really want to be certain you can try searching in searchyc.com.

[apotheon]

I said I'd like to know without having to submit it -- in short, without a submission showing up if it doesn't already exist on HN. Sometimes, I just want to know if something has already been submitted, and am not trying to submit it.