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Gerinski View Drop Down
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Points: 5093 		Direct Link To This Post Topic: Search in front page vs search in forum
    Posted: July 21 2012 at 05:31

For searching around the forum we have 2 ways:

1. on the front page we have the Search box and you can select "forum" in the drop-down list.
2. the Search function in the forum itself.
 
My experience seems to tell me that the forum Search, although if it may look more powerful offering quite some filters, is rather crappy and will often return no results, while the front page Search will find something (whether it's what you were searching for or not is another story).
 
Test case: let's say i want to discuss what is the ideal lenght of a review. I'm pretty sure that this has been discussed before so before starting a new thread I search for already existing threads on the subject.
 
On the forum search I typed as Keywords "ideal lenght review", in the drop-down list I select "match all words", as options I select "all forums" and "find posts = any date".
The search returns no results.
 
Then i try on the front page search: I type exactly the same words "ideal lenght review", select "forum" in the drop-down list and press enter. Many entries are found. Many are about ideal album lenght or whatever, but scrolling a bit around I find a couple of threads discussing the ideal lenght of a review.
 
Why are the search engines in front page (selecting search in the forum) and the forum search itself so different?
It gives a poor image of inconsistency to the site.
 
What are yor tips for efficient searching around the forum?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Dean View Drop Down
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 21 2012 at 06:51
The front page search is powered by Google and runs on Google's servers, while the internal one is built into the WebWiz forum software and runs on Max's server - Google are simply better at search engines than WebWiz. Also since the Google search does not impose an overhead on Max's server it can search forum body text, whereas the internal one has that ability disabled because it slows down the server.
 
The disadvantage of the Google search is it only searches the public pages.
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Dean View Drop Down
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 21 2012 at 08:02
The forum search only searches thread titles, so unless the search words appear in the title then nothing will be found. Spelling is also important - (length not lenght for example Wink) - not only in the search string but also in the thread title - this is why the Mods will correct spelling errors in thread titles and rename them if they are too ambiguous - we're not just being overy pedantic or fastidious grammar nazis.
 
There is a third search method, and that is the  Topic Search Topic Search that will search the thread body. Using this in conjunction with the main forum search can locate a specific post within a thread once you've located a likely thread to search - not immediately helpful perhaps, but I use it a lot to locate posts in long threads were I can remember someone posted something (having a good memory also helps).
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Points: 29625 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 21 2012 at 08:12
It is what it is.  Everyone should get a free pass when they do a search and don't turn up what they were looking for and start a new one.  I know I've poked fun at people starting a new one where there was already one. Embarrassed

Having said that i remain an active advocate of making your thread titles more amenable to searches.
Released date are often when it it impacted you but recorded dates are when it really happened...
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Andy Webb View Drop Down
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Points: 13298 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 21 2012 at 08:13
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

The forum search only searches thread titles, so unless the search words appear in the title then nothing will be found. 

What about "Message Body"? I rely on that to make sure bands haven't been suggested before without having to do a Topic Search of every genre thread. It's not the absolute best in-topic search, but it's effective enough. It's just that when you're searching for a band like "The Star" or something stupid-generic, it comes up with every post containing the word "the" and "star" in it.
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Dean View Drop Down
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 21 2012 at 08:25
Originally posted by Andy Webb Andy Webb wrote:

Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

The forum search only searches thread titles, so unless the search words appear in the title then nothing will be found. 

What about "Message Body"? I rely on that to make sure bands haven't been suggested before without having to do a Topic Search of every genre thread. It's not the absolute best in-topic search, but it's effective enough. It's just that when you're searching for a band like "The Star" or something stupid-generic, it comes up with every post containing the word "the" and "star" in it.
I wasn't aware that message body searches were enabled for all to use - Max disabled it at one time because of the server overhead. The main problem with it is it times out too often to be really useful.
 
To match "the star" try searching for "the+star"
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Gerinski View Drop Down
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Points: 5093 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 21 2012 at 08:33
TX for the tips.
In the forum search, what's the difference between selecting "Display Resuls As" 'Posts' or as 'Topics' ?
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Gerinski View Drop Down
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Points: 5093 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 21 2012 at 08:36
Originally posted by Dean Dean wrote:

Spelling is also important - (length not lenght for example Wink)
 
 
Embarrassed my mistake, it did not affect the argument though, I rechecked with the correct spelling
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Dean View Drop Down
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Points: 37575 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: July 21 2012 at 08:40
Originally posted by Gerinski Gerinski wrote:

TX for the tips.
In the forum search, what's the difference between selecting "Display Resuls As" 'Posts' or as 'Topics' ?
The difference should only be in how the results are displayed - "Posts" show the post while "Topics" just shows the topic title - however "Topics" often finds more matches for some reason (which I'm sure I do know the reason for but can't think of it at the moment).
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