Search engine doesn't search all terms or allow for modifiers ("and," "or," etc.)

[FrittSkritt]

In the old BB software, if you searched via the quick search dropdown shortcut, it automatically searched all terms, so results were more useful. For example, if I wanted to search “Irish Sport Horses,” all results that came up had to have all three terms, thus making the posts much more relevant.

(On the other hand, the old advanced search would search any of the terms, so posts that had “Irish,” “Sport,” or “horse” in it would come up, and there would be >500 results.)

Now none of the searches allow for either searching all terms or using an AND modifier. When I search for “Irish Sport Horse,” the results come up as separate terms, even if I type in “AND” in between each… this happens in both the quick search dropdown and advanced search.

Additionally, there’s no way to select “show posts” when you search from the dropdown in the blue bar at the top (Settings, FAQ, Member List, etc.). IIRC, the old forum software allowed advanced default search settings to apply as your default when you used the quick dropdown search, so if I chose “posts” as the default results in the Advanced search, it would also apply to Quick search.

[overthemoon]

I would like to know if there’s a way to search for phrases as well.

[Simkie]

There is, although not through the board’s search. Use google. Drop this into the search bar:

site:http://www.chronofhorse.com/forum “Irish Sport Horse”

Or use your booleen.

It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than what we have here.

[overthemoon]

Thanks Simkie.

I’m still wondering if this will be addressed on the site. Mods?

[overthemoon]

Bumping this back up. I’d like to know if this is something they will eventually address.

[Moderator_1]

Sorry I missed this thread earlier. Though the site settings are configured to allow Boolean searching, the default search has honestly never worked very well. I’m not sure I’m seeing what the OP is seeing re: not getting search results returned for all search terms. I just ran this search:

http://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/search.php?searchid=243795

All the posts appear to have all three search terms contained in it – I selected to have the results displayed as posts, not threads, at the bottom of the search options. You can also save your search preferences at the bottom of the screen to help customize how results are returned/displayed for you.

We’re currently working on preparing to merge our two user databases from the forums and the main site into a universal log-in, so we’re deleting unused and/or long inactive accounts, and will be doing some pruning of older, shorter threads, so the later will hopefully help return somewhat better results (as our searches are limited to 10 pages of results to reduce server load.)

Evaluating the search is something that was on our “next stage” list of things from the site upgrade for post-universal log-in implementation. I can make no guarantees, but it’s something that’s on our radar. Right now, we’re doing our best with the system that’s built into our software.

Thanks ~
Mod 1

[overthemoon]

@Moderator 1;6812072

Sorry I missed this thread earlier. Though the site settings are configured to allow Boolean searching, the default search has honestly never worked very well. I’m not sure I’m seeing what the OP is seeing re: not getting search results returned for all search terms. I just ran this search:

http://www.chronofhorse.com/forum/search.php?searchid=243795

That link leads me to a page that says “Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.”

I think I solved the mystery though. If you search “Irish Sport Horse” (WITH quotations) and your search is set to “Show Results as: Threads” at the bottom, the results you get will be anything with either of those words, not with all three together. If, however, you search for the exact same phrase with the exact same quotations, but have your search set to “Show Results as: Posts”, the search will retrieve hits for the entire phrase.

I have no clue why. But it’s better than nothing.

[Simkie]

Mod 1, I have never found it possible to link other members to search results as you have tried to do here. They always get the “sorry, no results” page, when I can click on the same link and access the search results fine.

Any idea why that is?

[Moderator_1]

I actually meant to check to see if it would work to post a link to the search I ran, but I got distracted! The link doesn’t work for me either. It might have to do with whether or not the search window is still open or time elapsed since the search, since it makes sense that the site wouldn’t “remember” every search ever done.

Sorry for the confusion ~