Search Issues

[Scott]

In another thread Butterbescotch and Krae855 alerted us to some difficulty they had using the search function. Basically, when they tried to use the search function to find a thread about a specific book they got too many results.

I think the problem was this. When you do a search one of the options you get is to either "search for any terms or use query as entered" OR "search for all terms". If you are trying to find a specific book, the first option is probably not good. For instance, searching for "Animal Farm by George Orwell" will bring up 404 different threads when searching for "any terms" but will only bring up only 52 options when searched for all terms. This is because searching for "any terms" would bring up any thread that uses the word George even if it does not contain the words Animal, Farm or Orwell, and bring up any thread the mentions the word Animal even if it doesn't mention the others and so so on. In contrast, in each of those 52 threads that come up the other way every one of those 4 words is mentioned (the word 'by' is probably automatically excluded for being too common), thus you can be sure that at least each thread contains an actual mention of the book Animal Farm by George Orwell as opposed to say being a mention of a book by George Clinton or say being a science book about petting zoos.

It used to be that search for "any terms" was selected by default. I have changed this now. Now, search for all terms is selected by default. This should help reduce the number of results so that when searching with default settings someone will more easily find the thread they are looking for. I have also added a notice if someone receives no results to try changing the default settings.

If anyone else has trouble using the search function please tell me. Feel free to use this thread to post any problems you have with the search feature. Please tell me what you are searching for, how you are searching for it (i.e. what are you entering into the search field and what settings have you tried using in your search), and what your problem is (e.g. too many results or too few results). I will try to not only help you find what you are looking for, but also can use this information to adjust the search mechanism to make it better for everyone for future use.

[Butterbescotch]

Thanks Scott for the problem. But may I suggest one more idea? Can you limit the search to "Title" only. It seems that a book that has common name is discussed in many threads. Thus, the book's thread discussion, which is exclusively for that book, is somehow buried.

[Scott]

I'll work on that.

For now, you can use the custom Google search box in the footer which should support standard Google search commands such as the <em>intitle:</em> command. Of course, Google search results will probably not be exhaustive and completely up-to-date as is our in-house search feature.

[TikkeUmlanapar]

Thanks scott for helping.