Is anyone besides me bothered by the fact that we don't have a modern search engine on this othewise excellent forum?

Recently, in the Powertrain section, some poor new guy brought up the question about "throttle body spacers" and was immediately jumped on by several old-timers for not using the "search" feature to find all the millions of previous posts.

I felt badly for him because I knew that if I typed in "throttle body spacer", even in Advanced Search, I'd get hits on any entry containing any of the words: "throttle", "body" or "spacer". Same thing happens if I type: "throttle AND body AND spacer".

Why can't the Advanced Search Page give us options such as "Match ALL Words", "Match ANY Words", "Exact Match", etc? The options it DOES give us, except for the one that looks for posts from a particular user or the one to confine the search to a particular forum, are fairly useless.

The way it's set up, there's really no way to do an intelligent search and I'm not surprised that frustrated members simply turn to asking (what seem to be old) questions.

I should also be noted if you "search" on "spacer" it will not match "spacers". This is NOT an intelligent SEARCH engine!

A web resource that offers as much as this one does and that seems to draw a large number of advertisers and sponsors should have a search capability that's better than 1990s technology, shouldn't it?

- Jack

 

A little time learning of the SEARCH engine controls will help you out. (These are certain to be in the instructions....).

To force the engine to find all words desired, precede each with a plus (+) sign.

To find partial matches, use the wildcard asterick (*).

Try this search sans the quotes: "+throttle +body +spacer*" and your result will include all threas that include all three words including the variations of "spacer".

Steve

 

Sorry Steve - these controls are not in the instructions! I tried your suggestion (actually, I'd tried it before) and got hits on any post with the words "throttle" or "body" or "spacer" in it. The "plus" (+) is really an "OR" and I want an "AND" (&).

If I type "&throttle &body & spacer", it looks like it matches the entire engine forum!

It seems to me the search function defaults to "Exact Match" and "Match Any Word".

What you are saying makes sense for a search engine that is "post stone-age". Unfortunately, this is not what we seem to have.

Please try your suggestion, limiting it to the Engine forum and then look at the third thread (as I remember). Do you see the matches with "throttle body" and "body spacer" - but not "spacers"?

This is my complaint - a search overwhelms you with useless hits. (And, honest, I know how to construct an intelligent search query).

- Jack

 

It's standard vBulletin, probably the most used forum software out there.

 

I'm sorry, but does this make it "good"?

- Jack

 

It makes it pretty much "standard" for forum search engines. Maybe you can get better results using a Google advanced search, specifying f150online.com as the domain to search.

 

I have never had a problem.

Look what I found on Google
http://www.google.com/search?q=f150o...ient=firefox-a

 

Jack,

I did some additional poking around vBulletin's support site.

It appears that the forum admin would need to enable fulltext and boolean searches in the usergroup settings, then rebuild the full index (time-consuming).

Ironically, you are correct in that there are no instructions on how to use this site's SEARCH implementation. I was operating under an incorrect assumption.

Steve

 

Since there is a max return of 500 what has helped me is searching just one forum, the most likely for the subject.
Also, I use the date feature, i.e. (one year and newer) or (five years and older) etc..

If I wanted 'throttle body spacer' I think I'd just use the 'throttle'.

If I'm really feeling frisky, I start with 'Thread Titlles Only'.
That's why I hate the following thread titles.....
'Hey guys what do you think about this'
'I got a problem'
'Help'
'Look at this....'
'Have a question...'
etc...etc...

 

The likelihood of that happening is pretty slim. The vBulletin forum that I admin doesn't use that - we use the standard vBulletin search - and it works pretty well.

 

The search type is Fulltext and boolean searches are allowed for all usergroups. (both have been the case since vB allowed the fulltext search option)

 

It looks like I have to hang my head in shame. I thought I had tried this before, but evidentally not.

To return all threads that contain the string: "throttle body spacer" you MUST surround the search query in quotes, as I did here. I just tried this (at Rockpick's suggestion - thanks Brad) and as far as I can tell, all of the threads that were returned had at least one instance of the complete string throttle body spacer in them.

Now interestingly, it still "matched" throttle body or spacer or throttle in those threads too, but all the threads had at least one "full" instance of the search string (and it's case insensitive, if anyone is interested). Again though, even though just spacer is matched, spacers is not.

And Raoul, I could not agree more with your complaint on the way some thread starters title their posts. I remember one guy who used his screenname as the title!

So, now that I feel properly humbled, I wonder if it would be possible to improve the instructions a bit for advanced searches? It might help in the future. If nothing else, add something to the FAQ?

- Jack

 

The search function is fine. Go to a website with a really poor search engine and you'd be blessed to have this ...

 

I have no problem with the current search engine. It has worked every time for me without a hitch.

 

I recall awhile back I posted a link to search string pararmeters.
Hold on a sec, I'll use our most excellent search engine to locate it....

ah....here it is:

https://www.f150online.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=319949

And I echo what Thumper said above about other sites.
I wept, for I had no shoes, until I saw a man with no feet.