Does the search work properly?

[Richo]

It seems no matter what i search for it always comes up with 500 posts, the large majority of which are not what im searching for. I have tried putting "and" and "+" in between words to refine it and also putting "" around groups of words. It seems that you cant refine the search and all you can do is search for an instance of a word or words, this is useless, you may as well just troll through the whole forum looking for what you want.

Can anyone give me some tips of using the search more effectively? Id much rather searching than posting up "noob" questions that have been asked before.:boggled:

 

[cribbj]

Appreciate you trying to use the search instead of re-asking the same stuff.

Are you using the Google search of the site, or the native search function? IMO, the Google search doesn't work as well as the native search.

Give us some examples of the keywords you're using.

 

[Richo]

well for instance "engine mounts", and i tried this morning "electronic crontrolled transmission", you cant specify that all the words are to be in the post only which would therefore get rid of most of the irrelevant posts.

I am using the native search function.

Atleast on php forums you can choose to "search for all terms" which helps a lot, im hoping there is a similar way to do this here.

Any help would be great.

 

[cribbj]

If you're getting 500 hits each time, then the search is too generic.

When you open the first search window, click on "Advanced search", which will take you to a search window with more options.

I usually try my 1st search with the keywords in the "Title Only", and I opt to "show the results by posts", not by threads, since sifting through a multipaged thread for what I'm after is a PITA. Since a summary of each post is produced with the results of the search, you can scan it pretty quickly.

I don't know that the boolean operators are working, properly however - it should be looked into, as there have been some other issues that popped up following an upgrade that was done awhile back.

 

[Richo]

well i just tried searching for "ecu" and "ect" even with an "*" at the end as i believe vbulletin cant search for words less than 3 letters?

no results for either of them :bigeyes: seems a little odd.

 

[cebby]

well i just tried searching for "ecu" and "ect" even with an "*" at the end as i believe vbulletin cant search for words less than 3 letters?

no results for either of them :bigeyes: seems a little odd.

The number of characters is a setting in the software and can be changed. Default is 5 I think (?) ECU or ECT are common terms and will result in a ton of hits though.