Is Search broken?

[RacingPete]

Sorry guys.. I had a look last week and the server had the correct details and was indexed correctly so it needed further investigation why it decided to not show the correct results. I am still working on that perculiarity.

[JulesV]

Search is still not working properly for me. It is finding just a fraction of the threads that it did a month or two back.

[RacingPete]

I am just gathering up a list of search terms that are not working along with the ones mentioned here so I can try to work out why the system isn't picking stuff up correctly.

Currently I have:

• Austec
• Alfa
• Plus Zeek's own problems

I just did a search on PS3 and that came up with a poll from yesterday. Anymore search terms and what you would expect would be great. Cheers

[jamieboy]

Clarkson.

This thread http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a... appears on page 8 of the search results, and apparently has no 'messages found' containing the word 'Clarkson', although in reality there are dozens.

Autosport.

This thread http://www.pistonheads.co.uk/gassing/topic.asp?h=0... has Autosport mentioned a couple of times towards the end, but doesn't show at all in the search results.

Prodrive.

This thread http://www.pistonheads.co.uk/gassing/topic.asp?h=0... has Prodrive in it a couple of times, but doesn't show at all in the search results.

Panerai.

This thread http://www.pistonheads.co.uk/gassing/topic.asp?h=0... has Panerai in it a few times, but doesn't show at all in the search results.

[RacingPete]

Thank you

Turning search off for a few minutes while we run some updates to see if it helps.

[Bodmin]

Any news after yesterdays investigation?

From the responses it would seem something happened/changed a couple of months ago which has triggered this. And it would appear that a lot of threads with very usefull information have vanished into the ether

Bodders

[RacingPete]

OK, I have changed the values of the length of period for topics to be indexed into the search system. It is now set with 3 1/2 months of Pie and Piston, and a years worth of the other topics.

This will run overnight and will either solve all the problems, or take all morning to index. Rough estimates I am on the limit for the max amount I can do so it will be touch and go on which way it goes.

I have noticed on the advanced search that a topic will only have the + sign next to it to expand the results if it is in the search database and not coming from the normal database (so anything over a year)

[JulesV]

Haven't you been able to search much further back until recently? My regular searches are now showing a tiny number of threads compared to a month or so ago.

[RacingPete]

The glitch was that it wasn't picking up a lot of the forums for the search and thus was dominated by P&P. This is a setting on the search database and not a code issue. All should be sorted tomorrow.

[JulesV]

Thanks Pete.

[Bodmin]

Thanks Pete, appears to be working fine now

Bodders

[jamieboy]

Certainly seems much better, thanks.

Except....

If I do my customary search for Alfa, I now get the 'is Clarkson right' thread at the top of the results, as expected, with 209 hits.

But the 'Most Recent' date for that thread is October 2007, when the last mention of 'Alfa' in the thread was 14th May 2008.

I've got a feeling that it used to find more than 209 hits in that thread, so is it possible that within that thread it's not finding the results that are more recent than last October?

Sorry to keep banging on about the same thread, it's just that it seems a handy one to highlight the problems.

[RacingPete]

I would expect the opposite and for it not to count those posts that are before the cut off point for the backup database which is 01/07/07

Though the most recent seems to be working in reverse for some reason as all the threads when searching for Alfa it lists the time stamp of the first item and not the last. I will look into why it is doing that.

[jamieboy]

RacingPete said:

Though the most recent seems to be working in reverse for some reason as all the threads when searching for Alfa it lists the time stamp of the first item and not the last.

That seems to make a sort of sense - the timestamp it's showing for the Clarkson thread (October 2007) is neither the first (19/01/07) nor the last (14/05/08), but the first after 01/07/07.

[jamieboy]

...so, is this as fixed as it's going to get?

[RacingPete]

I am working on the search on the dev environment at the moment so hope to have a few tweaks soon.

[jamieboy]

Bump.

[jamieboy]

From this thread, I know that "shortly" means "in a month's time", and "tomorrow" means "in a week's time".

So just to set our expectations, what sort of timescale does "soon" mean?

[RacingPete]

"soon" has to be longer than "shortly" I think!

I apologise if it looks like we are slow to respond and move to fix stuff, but I am afraid we get pulled onto commerical projects and when you only have a team of 2 for everything on this site certain things tend to slip.

I promise we haven't forgotton about this!

[CommanderJameson]

Would buying a Google Appliance thing be (a) technically feasible and (b) cost-effective?

I don't imagine (b) to be a problem, seeing as you at PH all wear clothes made of money and work at platinum desks, swigging Cristal from goblets made of unicorn horn, snacking on truffles and caviar inbetween.