when will the search engine be fixed ?

[jackal]

ok so i just searched for the word 'car' in general gassing

and it returned:

NONE FOUND






IMO the forums are potentially a really really useful resource here

(i am trying for example to find a 'what car' thread in a certain price range to stop me from posting something similar again)

but not until the search engine is fixed where thread titles can be properly found going right back through the years (not just 2010)

things seem to be getting even worse

what's going on anyone know ?

[Mr Will]

See here: http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

[jackal]

ok thanks

can't someone write that down at the top of the search page

something simple like:

SEARCH TIPS:

no short words or 2 letter words


how long would that take ?

and it might be easier than having to do a sherlock holmes on the actual forums themselves like i'm doing now

[Kinky]

I thought it was standard search functionality not to search for less than 3 letters due to indexing?

[jackal]

Kinky said:

I thought it was standard search functionality not to search for less than 3 letters due to indexing?

no idea what any of that means ?

are you suggesting that everyone who uses the internet should in some way know that already ?

[Stuart]

jackal said:

Kinky said:

I thought it was standard search functionality not to search for less than 3 letters due to indexing?

no idea what any of that means ?

are you suggesting that everyone who uses the internet should in some way know that already ?

Sort of, yes. Also, perhaps be a bit less grumpy about it?

Google is very good at dealing with short search terms but it doesn't power our search and a lot of website search tools are set up not to deal with search terms with three characters or less like ours. You'd get such a huge volume of search results that it would be meaningless, and a huge drain on server resources.

[jackal]

The thing is, focusing on the 3 letter problem is kind of masking the bigger picture. There are other problems besides this.

for example:



1. 4 letters can fail too

2. the 'search in titles' checkbox does not work either. It returns results whose titles have NONE of the words that you searched for.

3. you can only seach back 12 months or so


So you see the however you skin it, the search engine really isn't very good. In fact it's the poorest I have seen on any forum.

Finally, just to return to the 3 letter issue. Other forums seem to manage this ? On a car forum it's just about the first thing you need given the vast numbers of cars which are denoted by a 2 or 3 letter combination, 993, 911, A3, 735, M5, V70, 355 etc etc...

[Stuart]

jackal said:

The thing is, focusing on the 3 letter problem is kind of masking the bigger picture. There are other problems besides this.

for example:



1. 4 letters can fail too

2. the 'search in titles' checkbox does not work either. It returns results whose titles have NONE of the words that you searched for.

3. you can only seach back 12 months or so


So you see the however you skin it, the search engine really isn't very good. In fact it's the poorest I have seen on any forum.

Finally, just to return to the 3 letter issue. Other forums seem to manage this ? On a car forum it's just about the first thing you need given the vast numbers of cars which are denoted by a 2 or 3 letter combination, 993, 911, A3, 735, M5, V70, 355 etc etc...

Yes, we know. As has been said elsewhere, we do have a plan to upgrade the search functionality but it isn't at the top of our list. It is also worth using Google to search the site - we're ferociously spidered by them and their own results would more than likely always be better than any search tool that we could supply.

[Mr Will]

jackal said:

1. 4 letters can fail too

4 Letters should work, do you have any examples where it doesn't

jackal said:

2. the 'search in titles' checkbox does not work either. It returns results whose titles have NONE of the words that you searched for.

This has been broken for a while now, but is on the to-do list to be fixed.

jackal said:

3. you can only seach back 12 months or so

Our search server was struggling to cope with the increasing number of posts on PH, so the time period it covered was getting shorter and shorter. We recently invested in a new, much more powerful server which is now up and running and should allow us to extend the search a lot further back.

jackal said:

Finally, just to return to the 3 letter issue. Other forums seem to manage this ? On a car forum it's just about the first thing you need given the vast numbers of cars which are denoted by a 2 or 3 letter combination, 993, 911, A3, 735, M5, V70, 355 etc etc...

The 3 letter issue was caused by the switch to the new server. The old server indexed any words of 3 characters or more but the new server is interpreting the same instruction as "index any words of more than 3 characters".

We are aware of how much of an issue these bugs are causing, but unfortunately since installing the new server both Pete and I have been tied up in other projects so have not been able to iron out the bugs or take advantage of the increased power yet.

Watch this space though, we should have the bugs fixed soon and then the extra power of the new server will make itself apparent shortly afterwards.

[jackal]

ok thanks for the feedback


I just think its a shame because 10 years of forums has got to represent one of the single biggest information resources on cars in the world. And that's real information form the people who spend their hard earned and run cars properly. Yes you can obviously use google but it's not the same.

[Mr Will]

jackal said:

ok thanks for the feedback


I just think its a shame because 10 years of forums has got to represent one of the single biggest information resources on cars in the world. And that's real information form the people who spend their hard earned and run cars properly. Yes you can obviously use google but it's not the same.

Have you tried the Google option? I find it works surprisingly well for most things.