Something wrong with forum's search engine

[Shrimpburrito]

Others have eluded to it before....something appears to be wrong with the forum's search engine. Or maybe I just don't understand how it works. For example, when I enter the words "wilson cell phone amplifier" (without the quotes) in the search query, I get 499 threads, none of which I have yet to identify as having all of those words (but I have only gone through a few pages).

But if I search only the word "wilson", only 18 threads are presented.

Instead of searching for threads with all of those words, it appears to be searching for threads with any one of those words. Is that its intended function?

Dave

 

[Bill-TMO]

Is it intended? Who knows? Is it the way it works? Yes. It does pretty well on single words, but I have never had any luck doing Boolean (multi-word or phrase) searches on the vBulletin search engine.

If I really need a Boolean search, and don't want to wade through hundreds of irrelevant returns, I have found it better to go to groups.google.com, click on Advanced Groups Search, specify trailmanorowners.com/forum in the Site or Domain box (not the Groups box), it will sometimes do better.

Or go to google.com and click on Advanced Search. It brings up a similar window.

These aren't perfect either - this morning, for example, I am unable to get the "Author" filter to work. And it won't find anything that was posted since the last visit from the Google web-crawler.

Bill

 

[rtcassel]

There is a vBulletin forum that does a better search

The vBulletin forum http://www.tundrasolutions.com/forums appears to do Boolean searches correctly. Searching (without quotes) on "wilson cell phone amplifier" returns one post. Searching (without quotes) on "wilson or cell or phone or amplifier" returns many.

Why is the TMO vBulletin search engine set up differently than the Tundra Solutions vBulletin search engine?

http://www.rotorburn.com/forums/showthread.php?140016-vBulletin-Search-Tips has some vBulletin search tips.

 

[Shrimpburrito]

Why is the TMO vBulletin search engine set up differently than the Tundra Solutions vBulletin search engine?

Exactly. This appears to be a configuration issue vs. a software capability issue.

I tried the Google search method as you suggested, searching "Toilet" in the title and trailmanorowners.com/forum in the Site/Domain box, as shown here:

http://groups.google.com/groups/search?as_q=&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&num=10&scoring=&lr=&sitesearch=&as_sitesearch=trailmanorowners.com%2Fforum&as_qdr=&as_mind=1&as_minm=1&as_miny=2010&as_maxd=1&as_maxm=1&as_maxy=2010&as_ugroup=&as_usubject=toilet+&as_uauthors=&safe=off

It only comes up with 29 threads, and NONE of those threads appear in the Plumbing section. I checked them all. In contrast, when I use the forum's search engine to search "Toilet" in the Subject/Title line, it comes up with 89 threads -- 3x as many relevant results. And that's where alot of the good content is.

I think this is happening because the Technical section of the forum requires login credentials to access. Since the robots that Google and other search engine use do not have such credentials, they cannot access this content, nor index for searching.

Dave

 

[Bill-TMO]

I have no idea what is going on. It has always been like this, and I assumed that's the way it was built. I'll PM Chris, since he is the only one who could change anything - you might do so as well.

Bill

 

[rtcassel]

It looks like Chris has made a change to the search

Others have eluded to it before....something appears to be wrong with the forum's search engine. Or maybe I just don't understand how it works. For example, when I enter the words "wilson cell phone amplifier" (without the quotes) in the search query, I get 499 threads, none of which I have yet to identify as having all of those words (but I have only gone through a few pages).

But if I search only the word "wilson", only 18 threads are presented.

Instead of searching for threads with all of those words, it appears to be searching for threads with any one of those words. Is that its intended function?

SB - If you do the search now, you will find the post that you want. However, it does not find your post that began this thread (quoted above). Perhaps Chris is still indexing the data base. This is a great improvement.

 

[Shrimpburrito]

Yes, I followed-up with Chris as Bill suggested, and later received word back from Chris that he made the change. I think it is much improved, although it still doesn't search short words. I have also had problems searching for known threads, but as you suggested, maybe the site hasn't been indexed yet.

A major improvement, indeed.

Thanks, Chris!

Dave