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[yellowtractor]

I hate the CHE search function and it hates me.  I have tried everything the more adept forumites have suggested, and it still refuses to return my own posts (when I try to search for text I know I've typed).

Mods, help us.

[draco]

Yellowtractor,

Check this out and be sure to look in the search bar to see how I did it:

Yellowtractor Google search.

Now for comparison, search for your name with the local search function (I'd paste the link, but apparently the forum search doesn't come up with a dynamic http address).  Notice any difference?

[yellowtractor]

Good heavens.  I feel so...public.  Must go...polish the chassis, a bit.

[voxprincipalis]

Yes, it is sometimes better to circumvent the SMF search entirely. Most of the time I can make it do what I want, but on the occasions where I can't, I do a Google search as merigan describes.

VP

[voxprincipalis]

OK, mods, here's the next wrinkle.

I wanted to make a post on the "girly skincare/makeup" thread, which I started.

I went to the main search window and typed "girly" in the box. I told it to search in topic subjects only, since I knew what the thread was called.

It found the "girly footwear HELP" thread and the "girly clothes galore" thread, but did NOT find the "girly skincare/makeup" thread nor the original "girly clothes" thread.

What up? As far as I can tell, the word "girly" appears identically in all of these thread titles, but only two were found.

The mystery continues! <dramatic music plays>

VP

[infopri]

You think that's weird, vox, try this one.  I entered "wish" as the search term, and my own moniker in the user field.  No results, even though I knew I'd used the word "wish" in the "throw a penny in the wishing well" thread.  So then I tried "peer reviews" as my search term, and I found the post I was looking for--in which I'd said, "I wish I'd done those damned peer reviews weeks ago."  (emphasis added)

What gives??  (Surely "wish" isn't a stop word, is it?)

[moderator]

I believe that the search box at the top of the page does localized searches -- that is, it only searches the board or thread you're on (to do a more comprehensive search you have to click on the blue search tab). But that's still weird. I'll ask our techies to take a look.

Thanks.

Moderator

[voxprincipalis]

I believe that the search box at the top of the page does localized searches -- that is, it only searches the board or thread you're on (to do a more comprehensive search you have to click on the blue search tab).

That might explain infopri's trouble, but not mine, I think. I used the blue "search" tab, not the search box at the top of the page (and all the "girly" threads are in the same forum anyway, so it's weird that two of them showed up and two of them didn't).

Thanks for the help!

VP

[infopri]

I believe that the search box at the top of the page does localized searches -- that is, it only searches the board or thread you're on (to do a more comprehensive search you have to click on the blue search tab).

That might explain infopri's trouble, but not mine, I think. I used the blue "search" tab, not the search box at the top of the page (and all the "girly" threads are in the same forum anyway, so it's weird that two of them showed up and two of them didn't).

Thanks for the help!

VP

Nope, this explanation doesn't apply to my trouble, either.  I always use the main search page, not the local tab.  Moreover, as I said, using a different search term retrieved the post.  So local-vs.-global search wasn't the problem.  There must be a different explanation.

Thanks for trying to identify and resolve the glitch.  I remain hopeful that the answer will be found.  :)

[brunhilde]

There are still some irrelevant results with the search function. I tried to search for the recent thread on changing one's name with marriage. In all cases I used the search tab.

First I searched for "last name" (in quotes). The first result had neither word and of course not the phrase. A thread naming your children when you keep your name was on the 3rd or 4th page and was the first thread on the topic I was trying to find. I then limited the search to just the Meet and Greet and Balancing Work and Life boards to limit the results. I still got 6 pages of results, most of which were not relevant and not in the boards I specified. I tried to have the results sorted by most recent and then to show them as messages, but the results were the same.

Then I tried 'change "last name"' and got no results at all.

I found what I wanted when I searched for "birth name" (in quotes). All of these results were relevant, but many of the threads also had posts which should have appeared with the search for 'change "last name"'.