Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Is there that same problem with the search a month or so back?
- Thread starter Sesshi
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
It skips over terms that I know are present, and it seems to do this quite often. At first I thought this was because the term had been added after an edit but I know that's not the case now. 
Also, I didn't log on this morning but tried running a search and was asked to enter the numbers I saw in a box. It's a new implementation since the forum upgrades but just thought I'd mention it since I'm not sure whether it's intended.
Also, I didn't log on this morning but tried running a search and was asked to enter the numbers I saw in a box. It's a new implementation since the forum upgrades but just thought I'd mention it since I'm not sure whether it's intended.
It skips over terms that I know are present, and it seems to do this quite often. At first I thought this was because the term had been added after an edit but I know that's not the case now.
Also, I didn't log on this morning but tried running a search and was asked to enter the numbers I saw in a box. It's a new implementation since the forum upgrades but just thought I'd mention it since I'm not sure whether it's intended.
yeah... it does that for non-logged in people.... I may turn it off.
as for the quality of results... there's a potential improvement I could try to get working... but it requires a mysql upgrade, which I may not want to get into right now.
arn
Cool. I've done a test over the past few months with my username (well, the jew part) and reckon it's probably about 70% accurate - meaning it omits about 30% of results. It's consistent about its omissions and will continue omitting them in each subsequent search.
not sure if "jew" is good example... since your username may not appear in the body of the message, unless you are quoted. I don't know if I see that as a true failure of the system.
I mean, should a search of "Mac" return posts by "MacUser"?
arn
Yeah, I'm not looking for it as a quote or beside my own post, but just plain ol' written mentions of the word jew. I've tested it with jew because, well, I dunno really. However, it loses bigger and more specific words too.
Doing a word-specific search on titles alone always brings up thread titles that don't have the word in them, almost rendering the whole setup useless.
I'm sure I can remember a time when it wasn't like that, but that could just be me musing in my dotage...
I'm sure I can remember a time when it wasn't like that, but that could just be me musing in my dotage...
L
Lau
Guest
My issue with the search is that it tends to bring back a lot of irrelevant results, I think mainly because it searches as "OR" all the time. If I search for a thread that I know exists that was, say someone spilling beer over their MacBook and search for "beer" and "MacBook", I get a lot of threads that are about beer, and a lot of threads about MacBooks, but it's hard to then pick out the ones that are about beer and MacBooks.
I find I have to try and remember another random word that was said in that thread and search for that too, or something I know a certain poster said. It's all very well if you know a thread's out there, but not so useful if you're someone new on the site looking for information who just isn't going to get relevant results.
It's ok if you're searching for one word, but I don't find it very useful for anything more. Being able to search in quotes for a particular phrase would be helpful (and would help the above problem to an extent) but being able to search for "AND" as well as "OR" would be much better. I seem to remember getting better results with the old search, which I think was "AND"; although there were fewer results, they were a lot more relevant.
I find I have to try and remember another random word that was said in that thread and search for that too, or something I know a certain poster said. It's all very well if you know a thread's out there, but not so useful if you're someone new on the site looking for information who just isn't going to get relevant results.
It's ok if you're searching for one word, but I don't find it very useful for anything more. Being able to search in quotes for a particular phrase would be helpful (and would help the above problem to an extent) but being able to search for "AND" as well as "OR" would be much better. I seem to remember getting better results with the old search, which I think was "AND"; although there were fewer results, they were a lot more relevant.
This is getting really frustrating now. Every other vBulletin forum I've used has an excellent built in search engine, but as it is, MR's is useless, and the Google option is no substitute because you can't limit it to thread titles.