TB Search Feature

AB&CRRone Jan 31, 2009

  1. AB&CRRone

    AB&CRRone TrainBoard Supporter

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    No wonder threads are hard to find using TB's search. Looking for a recent thread I searched for "IM 60' flat" and got 1000 results. Luckily the one I was looking for was on the first page.

    The problem is this squirrelly factor: "The following words are either very common, too long, or too short and were not included in your search: IM, 60' ."

    Somebody needs to work on a better search feature. :prolleyes:


    Ben
     
  2. DiezMon

    DiezMon TrainBoard Supporter

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    yeah, it really just needs the ability to take quoted searches "look for this" kind of thing...

    I've had trouble finding my OWN posts once in while. searching quoted text really would have helped :)
     
  3. Phil Olmsted

    Phil Olmsted TrainBoard Member

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    Hi DiezMon,

    I'm not sure about more detailed searches, but if you click on "Advanced Search" and enter your user name, all your posts/threads should come up.
     
  4. AtomicVette

    AtomicVette TrainBoard Member

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    vBulletin is setup by default to ignore search terms of 3 characters or less. It's an easy fix to make it include smaller words, but more server intensive. So it's kind of a trade off. I have no idea what servers or server usage trainboard is getting so I can't say either way, but I run 5 vBulletin sites, and I've got all of mine setup to be able to search 2 character words. It's just so much more helpful since there are so many short acronyms used these days.
     
  5. FriscoCharlie

    FriscoCharlie Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    We do have two-letter searches disabled. For the search function to index two letter words requires indexing thousands and thousands more searches than three letter words.

    The search feature on TrainBoard works exactly as designed and I can't really see how it could be better.

    Think about it for a moment, any word you think of contains a number of two-letter combinations.

    "Railroad" - ra ai il lr ro oa ad. All of those things would have to be indexed for every word, millions of them.

    If you were searching for IM, as you indicated, imagine how many thousands of results are possible. It would be nearly impossible to find what you were looking for.

    Charlie
     
  6. FriscoCharlie

    FriscoCharlie Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Diezmon,

    See the screenshot in this post.

    Charlie
     

    Attached Files:

  7. jagged ben

    jagged ben TrainBoard Member

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    I understand the difficulty, but it's really unfortunate not to be able to search for...SP, BN, NS, UP, CP, CN .... you get the idea. Anyway to index certain two letter words?
     
  8. DiezMon

    DiezMon TrainBoard Supporter

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    yes, but then I have to weed through all 925 of them :)
     
  9. AtomicVette

    AtomicVette TrainBoard Member

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    also, this is sometimes helpful, Google is sometimes more helpful at finding things than the search provided by the actual website.

    [SIZE=-1]If you include [site:] in your query, Google will restrict the results to those websites in the given domain. For instance, [help site:http://www.google.com] will find pages about help within Google. [help site:com] will find pages about help within .com urls. Note there can be no space between the "site:" and the domain. [/SIZE]
    [SIZE=-1] This functionality is also available through Advanced Search page, under Advanced Web Search > Domains.[/SIZE]
     
  10. FriscoCharlie

    FriscoCharlie Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    No, I am afraid not. Even if so, it would require a lot of work to figure out just which ones to index.

    Use the advanced search feature. Type in a word or words and put your username in the other box. That should make it easy.

    Charlie
     
  11. AB&CRRone

    AB&CRRone TrainBoard Supporter

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    I was searching for "IM 60' flat" which was the exact first three words of the posted thread title. The search result was 1000 threads that contain only the word "flat."

    Of course Google is hardly better. When trying to research my wife's cancer diagnosis, Google failed to consider "with" in a condition "such and such" with "such and such", a rare condition. So I could only get results for each part of the condition (in the millions for each) but not the two combined.

    I'm sorry, but I can see how each could be better.


    Ben
     
  12. FriscoCharlie

    FriscoCharlie Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    That's because it ignored the two-letter words.

    But in order to give you the results you wanted, it would still have to index two-letter words individually. If "IM 60" was possible, "IM" would have to be possible also!

    Charlie
     

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