Searching The Forum

[Admin]

There's a lot of information here on the Organ Forum and finding what you're looking for can be a difficult task.

This thread is for the discussion of the Organ Forum's search engine and how to get the most out of it.

The posts that immediately follow were split off from another discussion and moved here to make them, err.. easier to search for.

[dzlvs8]

Here begins the posts imported from the thread where this discussion begin. dzlvs8 had asked about searching for Leslie oil. Admin responds:

If you want to search for Leslie oil, enter "Leslie oil" with the quotes. The forum search engine searches the title and body for the words you entered. Posts containing one or more words in your search terms will match. Putting quotes around "Leslie oil" will match only those posts containing the phrase "Leslie oil"

This is how most search engines work.

Thanks for the info Admin. That is very helpful. I always saw the keywords it was searching for and it didnt seem to pull up anything but the keywords. The ONLY way to pull up words besides keywords is to have the item in quotes. Basically searching for leslie or leslie oil (without quotes) brings up the same exact search results. That is NOT normal for a forum based on the ones that i have used. It may be good for someone to put some instructions near the search area or on the advanced page saying "use quotes for searching non keyword items". Its just a suggestion but I think it would help.

Im not a computer idiot and I have posted lots of valuable info on here over the last six months and it is almost impossible for me to find some of the stuff. Also everyone that I seem to refer to here comes back to me saying they couldnt find there info. Again, this is just fyi.

[Admin]

I always saw the keywords it was searching for and it didnt seem to pull up anything but the keywords. The ONLY way to pull up words besides keywords is to have the item in quotes.

I'm not sure what you mean by "pull up anything but the keywords". There is no keyword metadata in the posts themselves so the search is simply identifying any and all posts that contain any of the words you are specifying as keywords in your search. So if you enter Hammond drawbars into the search you get posts containing either the word Hammond OR the word drawbars.

[ed. This is incorrect. The Search engine is And ing terms meaning that all terms in the search must be present in the result. More information in a later post.]

This is the way most search engines including Google and Bing work, although they rank the results containing both higher. The Forum does not rank posts by relevance and the search has no way of specifying that you want only those posts with the words Hammond AND drawbars in them. [ed. see above comment] .The best you can do is search for phrases that you specify in quotes.

The gotcha with the search you were performing was the word oil. For efficiency reasons, the search engine ignores words under four characters. So searching for Leslie oil or Leslie will bring up the same set of posts since the word oil is ignored. Using the phrase "Leslie oil" will provide what you're looking for in this case.

As far as I know, what I've described here is the way most forum search engines work and is the default behavior (except for the four character word requirement) for the major search providers as well. I'd be happy to look at how other Forums are handling search differently if you'd care to send me links and examples.

Due to the fact that much of the data here was imported from the previous forum platform, it is possible that it wasn't indexed fully or properly. I don't know that, but it is possible, and if so, there's not much I can do about it. Google, Bing, etc. do index this site so you could always search on them adding the word organforum to search criteria.

Finally, the tags feature provides a way of attaching keywords to posts and is really a better way of locating topics of interest than a word search. Unfortunately most posters either don't know about them or fail to take the time to enter them.

[Bobmann]

I agree with Steve...I get frustrated trying to access anything in this archive. Searches usually yield hundreds of threads that have nothing to do with my initial search.
I do not look at many forums, and really do not know the "rules"
Some search functions have an "Advanced Search" or something similar that is good for dummies like myself.
I wonder how many others like us are out there.
This is not a criticism of this wonderfully informative forum , just a suggestion on a possible improvement.

Bob

[dzlvs8]

FYI- Actually, on Google and Bing when you type in two words it first brings up posts with BOTH words. Most search engines in forums and other places use a symbol to type in to signify searching for this OR that.

According to how you are saying the search works (which, I also agree, it seems like it is works this way)
When someone searches for the words - drawbars quiet - (for example) it should only bring up posts that have BOTH words in them. If not the search will bring up every single post that has the word drawbars (only). This makes the search function insanely difficult to use. I literally have typed in very specific sentences from my posts and when I search for that entire phrase, I get hundreds of other items also, and it has made it very hard to find some stuff i have been looking for.

If it is possible to make changes to how the search function searches it would be good. Literally every week I refer people to here to find info on my mods and 95% of the people come back to me saying that they couldn't find the information because the search doesn't work right

[Admin]

When someone searches for the words - drawbars quiet - (for example) it should only bring up posts that have BOTH words in them. If not the search will bring up every single post that has the word drawbars (only). This makes the search function insanely difficult to use. I literally have typed in very specific sentences from my posts and when I search for that entire phrase, I get hundreds of other items also, and it has made it very hard to find some stuff i have been looking for. [/B]

If it is possible to make changes to how the search function searches it would be good. Literally every week I refer people to here to find info on my mods and 95% of the people come back to me saying that they couldn't find the information because the search doesn't work right

Looking into this further, I find that I was mistaken. The Forum Search is doing an AND by default

The search Schober finds 58 threads
The search Schober dorf brings up 7 -- clearly an and.

The search for drawbars finds 500 items
The search for drawbars quiet finds 54 items -- clearly an and.

I'd like to see some examples of searches that are failing to find existing posts as an aid to fixing any problems with the search here. Also, links to forums with better search would be useful.

[TheAdmiral]

Admin, Try this: m3 study. It's not in the top 20 and the things that come up are not related. It should be an easy find as it is a thread I started.

[Admin]

The search for M3 study in the search box finds your thread in the top 25 because it orders the search by date.

If you use Advanced Search, enter M3 study as keywords, and order by relevance, your thread appears in the top 20 items returned.

If you do the same and limit the search to titles it appears in the Top 5 results.

You can set the default search order for your searches in Advanced Search

[Admin]

Some search functions have an "Advanced Search" or something similar that is good ...
Bob

The link to the Advance Search is directly under the Search box at the top of the Forum

[jimmywilliams]

I think a helpful feature would be to search by a complete phrase. Some search engines either allow "phrase" as an option, or allow you to enclose a full phrase in quotes. I did try the phrase "gulbransen organ" in quotes as a test - but it brings up all posts that contain both of those words separately, whether as a contiguous phrase or not.

There is also something funny about how the "today's posts" list (which is actually a search from what I understand) is populated when I am logged in as opposed to when I am not logged in. I'll check the user settings to see if there is anything I have to tweak there.

I do think you are onto something about the older posts possibly not being indexed correctly - which I assume is out of your hands.

Thanks for providing this thread where we can keep all our searching issues together and hopefully the information everyone provides will help.

- jimmy