"Forum Search" up the sprout?

[#1]

I see what you mean now. To extend your example, If you had used the phrase "extension bites" on another post in a different topic, then both pages would have been returned.
OK, the Google search is not be foolproof, but isn't it still better than the current built in search?
What you are suggesting may be possible if the Community Site allowed each post to be displayed on a separate page. Google could then index those posts individually and a search would be able to return only those posts where the required username and phrase appeared. To see the other posts in that topic, I would expect that the mod would provide for a breadcrumb trail at the topic of the post allowing the user to jump back into the topic.
In that situation, if we both had a post including "extension bites" the Google search should only return your post and not mine.
However, I think that it would require a mod to be installed (for example http://custom.simplemachines.org/mods/index.php?mod=541) and that would need a Plusnet person who was inclined to do it

[#2]

Quote from: JohnJ

OK, the Google search is not be foolproof, but isn't it still better than the current built in search?

That's not difficult.
To be honest I wish you hadn't mentioned Google - it's hopeless compared to the SMF search when it is working correctly and I don't want Plusnet using it as an excuse for not fixing the inbuilt search.
Incidentally, does the inbuilt search look inside quotes? It just occurred to me that it would make sense if it didn't and Google certainly couldn't match that.

[#3]

Quote from: Be3G

I think you've just discovered jelv's certain penchant for rhetorical questions.

Not so rhetorical! Within the last month I've spent over half an hour searching for a previous post of my own which should have been found in a couple of minutes had the search been working. In the end I had to resort to going to the list of all my recent posts and guessing roughly for when a made the post. I then used the Firefox page search to quickly check the dozens of pages I had to look at.

[#4]

I often use the last post bit but hadnt though of the Firefox tip thanks for that

[#5]

I've also used the Recent Posts browsing once or twice, but it was a bit of a grind, even though I've not got that many posts to look through.
I'd experiment with the built-in search to see if it looked inside quoted strings, but even the sight of the page just annoys me now

[#6]

Why is this in resolved?
It isn't as resolved as we first thought!

[#7]

Looking into the past history of this thread the problem was reported fixed on the 19th Feb 2008 and then there was a big gap until jelv's post on the 15th Nov 2008.
Having said that I just tried a few searches and it doesn't work at all for newer posts.
I just tried an advanced search for "message" newest first and the top result was dated 16th Aug 2002 but doing the  same search using the standard search the top result was dated 12 Sept 2007 In my opinion this is not fixed at all - hence moved back to the Report Bugs section as suggested by several posters.
[Moderator's note by Jim (Oldjim)  Thread moved to Reported Bugs ]

[#8]

I've had cause to try and use the search again today and it still seems to be broken. Can anyone get to to work to find posts made in the last few months?

[#9]

I have some success by restricting the number of days searched, it's better but not great.

[#10]

Well I've tried it a couple of times lately with limited success, only because it wasn't a very demanding search.
A question I do have is "How does it decide on relevance?" There doesn't appear to be any logic to this (or it's very convoluted) so I'd prefer the default search to be "most recent first".
I'll try and give it a bit of a thrashing over the weekend and post back any interesting (or even boring) observations.

[#11]

The good thing is that because its so old, we can at least find this topic.

[#12]

Just found another problem
A search with the option "Match all words" gives exactly the same results as "Match any words"
Surely that should be fixable or should we just give up on the whole thing 

[#13]

A reliable and workable 'search' function will become even more important once the revised Forum structure is in place? 
Each board will have a significantly larger number of posts to wade through.
Any movement on getting this sorted?
Maurice

[#14]

I didn't give it as much tanking as I'd hoped a while ago, but it does seem better than it was but as I have previously said the most irritating thing is that the default is set to most relevant rather than most recent - that's got to be an easy fix surely?. I haven't tried Jim's point, I'll try that.

[#15]

Well, I knew I'd brought this up before, and guess what, using the Forum Search with the "Search order:" set to "Most recent topics first" I found it with no problem.
Is it possible to change the Default "Search order" to "Most recent topics first" . 9 times out of 10, the "Most relevant results first" yields an irrelevant list in no common sense order