Search Function: What Am I Doing Wrong?

[Joe Kramer]

All I want to find is the "A/DA Flanger Does TZF" thread.  I know it's out there, but the obvious keywords don't bring it up.  Frustrating.  What am I doing wrong?  Thanks for help.

[beens]

http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=49929.0

[Alex C]

Is this the one?
http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/index.php?topic=49929.0
[EDIT- Bjørn beat me to it!]

I searched for "ADA flanger."  I'm not sure if the slash is recognized by the search function, and I figured someone in the thread would refer to it as "ADA" instead of "A/DA."

Forum search functions are not always thorough enough for my taste, for whatever reason.  A back-up method is to use Google and search within a site.

Using the forum search for the term "tzf" brought up only two threads, and not the 35-pager, but searching on Google for "site:diystompboxes.com tzf" (no quotes) brought up the big one.  I know next to nothing about the workings of search engines and how they differ, but I know I have been getting better results on several forums with the Google method.

[Joe Kramer]

Yes, that's the thread.  Thank you.

Maybe I'm out of line to criticize, because it may just be my own fault, but it seems to me a search function should respond to the most intuitive and obvious keywords.  When I search on A/DA, this search engine calls up every post with the letter "a" in it.  That's just dumb.  When I search on "A/DA Flanger Does TZF," the verbatim title of the thread, this engine calls up a lot of threads totally unrelated to anything that I can decipher. Not even close.

Not to be complaining and blowing off steam just for the sake of it here (although it is frustrating), but when people are always being told "use the search function," it would make sense if the search function was a little bit more useful.  At least it should be up to par with everything else about this great forum.

Thanks again for the help.

[Dave_B]

You might try Google for searching DIYS.

* Click on the 'Advanced Search' link
* Enter your search string
* Paste "http://www.diystompboxes.com/smfforum/" in the domain box.

[aron]

simplemachines.org makes the software. The search here is much better than the older software, but of course can be improved. I have asked.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Does it help to search for "a/da" ? (i don't know..)
Many years ago when I studied information retrieval systems (in library science) there was a saying that "if it is more painful to search for information than it is to do without the information, then the client will not search".
We used to really put down "natural language" searching - but now, thanks to google, that's what we use nearly always.

[The Tone God]

I believe part of the problem with that search criteria is the "/" character in A/DA. Special characters have different meanings to search engines so the engine was just interpreting the character as part of it's function.

Andrew

[Dave_B]

I don't think that's it.  Something is not right about the DIYS search engine. 

Search term: "TZF Flanger" (no quotes)
Options:
* Advanced Search
* Match all words
* Search in topic subjects only
Results: 1 hit - "TZF Flanger Idea"
The "A/DA Flanger does TZF?" thread should obviously show up, but doesn't.

Deselecting "Search in topic subjects only" goes to the other extreme.  Thirty pages of results, many of them NOT containing the acronym "TZF" in the post.

[aron]

Dave,

If you check out the search functions in phpBB and SMF and in almost all widely available forum software, I think you will start noticing that almost all of them have major problems with search.

Barring someone altering the search code, I think this will be the case for the next few generations. This is a common request. The search in SMF is way better than phpBB was although it is not perfect.

I think the problem is the limit of not being able to search or words smaller than x number of characters vs... CPU hog time, vs. search indexing vs. not.

In other words, it's a trade-off.

Aron

[aron]

Unfortunately in our case, we want to search for words smaller than 4 characters:

Force using an index will only yield results if at least one of the words can be found through using the index. As fulltext normally doesn't index words less than 4 characters or words that often appear, a lot of search requests are returned with no results.

On the other hand, disabling the option would use the search index and, on failure, would try to search without index. That can be significant slower (and have more impact on the server), but it more often yields results.

[The Tone God]

Many search engines will exclude words with three letters or less (Update: I see Aron has find support for this). I think the other problem is that you are using too many words some of which are odd like "idea". The engine is looking for threads with all these words in them. If it doesn't find all the words it excludes the thread.

I did a search using the criteria: "zero flanging" (with quotes) and at this time the thread you were looking for is the third hit and the follow up thread is fifth.

Andrew

[aron]

Even more info:

http://www.databasejournal.com/features/mysql/article.php/1578331

It's not that it's "not working", it's not designed for us.

[Joe Kramer]

Thanks everyone.

I'm glad this topic has spurred something constructive.  I was half-afraid I'd get flamed for simply not having the 'net chops to get what I want, but now at least I know it's not just me.

If there are known shortcomings with the search function, I'd like to suggest a special FAQ that would help searchers offset those shortcomings, especially if it doesn't look like the searchware will be improving in the near future.  Knowing about workarounds like the three-letters-or-less factor would help tremendously.  As I've said, everything else about the forum is top-notch, but I guess Google has spoiled me for search functions.

[aron]

Wait a minute. OK, you do know that anything within quotes is searched as an exact match right?

So in your example, if you put "A/DA Flanger Does TZF" in the search field including the quotes, it does find it. Slashes and all.

This is the same as google. When I know the string to search, I always put it in quotes.

[aron]

Who wants to write the next search algorithm? :-(

[Joe Kramer]

Thanks, I do know about the quotes.  I searched on the string, but may have left out the slash in A/DA.  If you do that, you come up with zilch.  I'll admit pilot error if that's what happened, but still, that's pretty touchy.  Again, just a brief FAQ on all this might be of some good.  I'd help write new code, but my computer skills are obviously pretty remedial.   

 

[aron]

Where would we put the FAQ? In the FAQ?

The problem is any changes in the forum software, causes problems the next time the forum software is updated. Maybe in the themes files it can be done.

[Dave_B]

You could add some basic search tips to the search php.  Is it this one?

I'm not sure how much info you'd want to put in there, but the 4-character minimum would be helpful.  If you wanted to change the minimum search string to three, I'm pretty sure that's a MySQL setting.  It's been a long time since I needed to know that , so it might be wrong.

[aron]

If at all possible I want to try and avoid modifying any php files. Only because it becomes a real drag when updating. I see I will have the same problems anyway with the language settings. I will see what I can do.