Search problems (No of characters?)
 

I am having a problem with the search function of the forum.
I wanted to find out how much AVO 8s are offered for on the forum so went advanced search for AVO 8 in items offered but got no results

I did a bit of experimenting and found that 3 letter words such as AVO or VCM return no results.
AVO 8 (with a space) also returns no results however AVO8 does

Is the search limited to words of 4 letters or above?

Peter

Re: Search problems (No of characters?)
 

The forum search facility requires a minimum of four characters in a word so "Pye" and "AVO" won't work.

The answer is to use the Google Custom Search box at the top centre of every forum page.

The first few results returned will be adverts, but after that you'll see forum specific stuff.

Re: Search problems (No of characters?)
 

The forum search has always been limited to 4 characters, due to the database structure etc of the old forum software we use. As Graham says, the Google Custom Search gives better results in cases like this (which is why it was added some time ago).

Re: Search problems (No of characters?)
 

I've never had any joy using the onboard Search facility, and there's no point using the Google search for 'Modern equipment' as Google has yet to make 10 posts ;)

Even though I limit the search to 4 characters (not words), e.g. "DAB" and play about with the advanced search specifying the modern equipment forum, even posts by Julesomega, nothing happens. Am I missing something?

Re: Search problems (No of characters?)
 

The other point to note with the embedded search facility is that multiple search words separated by spaces give results that contain ANY of the words. I'm not sure whether there's a way to show only results that contain ALL the search words.

For instance, a search for "Avometer eight" would return all posts containing "Avometer" AND all posts containing "eight", not just those containing "Avometer eight".

Re: Search problems (No of characters?)
 

I’ve noticed this as well. Is there a way to search for threads containing ALL the search words? I’ve tried different punctuation to no avail.

Thanks,

Peter

Re: Search problems (No of characters?)
 

Using the search string:

Avometer AND eight

Will only show results with both Avometer and eight.

"Avometer eight" will return results which have the exact match for Avometer eight.

Avometer OR eight will return results with either of the search words.

Paula

Re: Search problems (No of characters?)
 

Another trick which works with the internal search engine and most other search engines is to put a specific phrase inside quotes, for example "Avometer 8 spares", will only return results containing the exact phrase in the quotes.

And if you really want to search for a word which is shorter than four letters, try entering

Avo OR Avo

The search engine isn't smart enough to realise both words are the same, so it will return all results containing Avo. (I've just tried it).

Re: Search problems (No of characters?)
 

I thought I had previously tried the "and" trick (as well as the quoted string) without success, but I'll try again next time I do a search.

Re: Search problems (No of characters?)
 

For the purposes of another thread, I wanted to find a thread mentioning both Aurora and Hedghog standards converters, so I searched for Aurora AND Hedghog - which brought up results NOT containing both words.

Re: Search problems (No of characters?)
 

I limit the search to 4 characters (not words) and always get 0 results, However, if I put more than 2 words I get 500 pages of results :(

Re: Search problems (No of characters?)
 

The built-in forum search seems to be an OR search only, in that it will find threads containing any of the words you enter rather than all the words you enter. Keywords like AND don't have any effect.

If you want to search for more than one word go to Advanced Search and sort by relevancy, descending rather than by date. Posts containing all the words are more relevant so should appear first.

The limited documentation in the FAQ doesn't give any other options either, so that is probably just how it is and I doubt much can be done about it.

Today's database update should allow searching on three letter words such as Pye and AVO but won't help with anything else.

This is why we also have the Google search box. Google do website searching vastly better than any code here could, but it only covers sections that are visible when not logged in.

Re: Search problems (No of characters?)
 

Searching for three character words seems to work now. It is quite slow though.

Re: Search problems (No of characters?)
 

I should have said earlier that my comments were intended for use with the Google search. That does seem to give more than you would expect with a search of Aurora AND hedghog. The odd (but correct in this context) spelling of hedghog seems to be the cause.

Searching instead for:

aurora AND "hedghog" seems only to return what would be expected. However, it doesn't pick up the many threads with "hedgehog" also relating to the aurora product.

To pick up both hedghog and hedgehog, a search for:

aurora AND "hedghog" OR hedgehog

seems to work from the forum, but probably won't be much use as a general Google search!

Re: Search problems (No of characters?)
 

As an aside to this and i think i've asked this question before, but can't remember the answer, why is it that, under advanced search ( not Google ) I can only see posts of mine going back to Jan 2016?

Thanks

Aub

Re: Search problems (No of characters?)
 

I think its a limit in how many results the search engine can show.

If you do a search only for threads started by you as opposed to all threads, the number of results is much lower and it does go all the way back to 2006.

Again if you do a search for all your posts but in the domestic Radio section it goes back to 2007

Hope that helps

Cheers

Mike T

Re: Search problems (No of characters?)
 

Mike, thanks very much for the explanation.

Cheers

Aub

Re: Search problems (No of characters?)
 

As Mike says, there is a limit of 500 posts in the search results and they are sorted by whatever you choose (default is date descending) which would explain why you only see some results.