"Forum Search" up the sprout?

[#1]

I was just searching for "drupal" to see if anyone had tried installing it, or asked questions about it with regard to PlusNet.
It came back with a whole hoard of un-related threads with a listed relevancy of less than 50% (none of them mentioned drupal!). I did a similar search for Joomla with equal unsuccess.
So you can imagine my surprise tonight to find a thread about drupal & joomla in the website forum!
Unless I am a complete dufus, then the search feature doesn't appear to be working as it should....
{edited the title temporarily to give a slightly (post-)Christmas feeling!}

[#2]

Ok.
Just an update. When I now search for "drupal", this thread appears top, with 65% relevance (with another completely drupal unrelated thread just behind it at 64.9%!!!).
The thread about "drupal" I found by hand, appears at 24.7% relevance??? What the!?!
These are the only two threads that get the little quote box with drupal highlighted in the text. None of the pages of other threads have the word drupal in them...
Something very odd going on...

[#3]

Yep, I'm seeing this to. 
A search for Metronet brings up a 69.7% top hit with no mention of Metronet anywhere in the post.
2nd item is a real "hit"; 3rd is a "miss" and so it goes on.
I don't know if it's a bug or not.
Any one else like to give "search" a try to see how common this issue is?

[#4]

I've just tried searching (separately) for mtu and ping.  The top hit in both cases is the same but doesn't contain either string.
Hits that do contain the string include a blue text box with the instances marked in yellow, those that don't contain the string have no box.  So the search seems to know, but lists them anyway!

[#5]

Quote from: spraxyt

I've just tried searching (separately) for mtu and ping.  The top hit in both cases is the same but doesn't contain either string. Hits that do contain the string include a blue text box with the instances marked in yellow, those that don't contain the string have no box.  So the search seems to know, but lists them anyway!

Yes. That is what I was seeing with my "Drupal" searches. If it finds the word somewhere is gives a quote box and highlights the found word... but most of the "results" didn't have this box in my case.
Also what defines the "relevance" item... I guess it is difficult to separate this out if the main search is messed up, but top search for drupal this thread at only 65%, (only 0.1% ahead of a non-drupal thread) but then pages of other non-drupal threads until 24% where the second mention appears.
I'm assuming that fixing the main issue will resolve the "relevance" ratings too, but if not... how are they devised and can the "formula" for their creation be tweaked?

[#6]

Has there been any work put into this issue?

[#7]

Nope. Don't even recall having ever seen the post until now...

[#8]

Hmm... REALLY random.

[#9]

Colin,
Are you getting these same results when you search here?
Mike

[#10]

I get my post in the Polish forum top each time...

[#11]

Hi Colin,
Any progress to report.
This issue is starting to become a pain in the ........

[#12]

The search feature on the old portal was poor, but I agree this one is worse.
I prefer to use google like this >
Your search term here :site:http://community.plus.net
Which works quite well.
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Edit: Test please ignore this portion of post

[#13]

What's odd is that if you search for "Banana" and select that no boards are to be searched, the search works!

[#14]

Quote from: James_H

My view is that the in-built search should be ditched, and replaced with a Google search box for this site.

That's something we are considering, using our own Google box. Other than that, no progress to report on the issue.

[#15]

The PUG forums are using SMF which is the same as these forums, why does search appear to work over there but not here?