Am I stupid or is the search function in this forum not the most effective?

[tinatoth]

I'm finding it extremely difficult to search this forum.  For example. I enter "text links" into the search. What I get is millions of absolutely random results containing the word "context" (because it contains "text!???!) and words "text" and "links", but not the phrase "text links". I'm surprised it doesn't seem to recognise words in quotation marks as whole expressions, it still separates them. It makes searching for anything with a vaguely general name very difficult, may as well look through the forum page by page.

Another thing I just noticed is, it doesn't seem to respect the "Search in topic subjects only" tick. I tick it, and it still searches through the whole post.



Am I doing something wrong or is there really something wrong with it...?? 

[vbgamer45]

This forum uses a different search system called Sphinx than the internal smf search.
Sphinx is used to provide faster search results and help the performance on this site.

[Ben_S]

Could be that the sphinx api is an older revsion than the latest & so doesn't support phrase matches, one of the devs might want to check.

[eleven0]

They are still working on it I think.

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=216518.0

[karlbenson]

Well there was a new version of Sphinx out yesterday.
http://www.sphinxsearch.com/

[dschwab9]

Guys, I believe this should be fixed.   Can you please let me know if it's better now?

[eleven0]

It still doesn't work for me. I still get 50 pages.

[dschwab9]

what are you searching for?

[Assistance]

the search here is very brutal
use Google  "text links" -"Latest -posts -of" site:simplemachines.org/community
Results 1 - 10 of about 39 from simplemachines.org/community
for "text links" -"Latest -posts -of". (0.25 seconds)

[dschwab9]

the search here is very brutal
use Google  "text links" -"Latest -posts -of" site:simplemachines.org/community
Results 1 - 10 of about 39 from simplemachines.org/community
for "text links" -"Latest -posts -of". (0.25 seconds)

I just searched for "text links" here and it returned 10 pages, all of which look relevent and conatined the full phrase.   I'm not sure what the -"Latest -posts -of" part is for?  Could you please try it and let me know what's wrong with that result set?   I'm willing to try to fix it, but when all you tell me is "is sucks", I have no idea what you're complaining about.

[Assistance]

(Google) minus says not to look for that text
it returns members profile pages

when i search for "text links"
I don't want returns of "text" or "links"
I want "text links"

Idea?
on the Relevance column
if clicked it would sort by %
(same with date)

[dschwab9]

Also, for further testing, I noticed the second topic on the page had the word "smileys" in it, so I changed my search string to "text links" -smileys and, as expected, that topic disappeared from the list.    The next one had the word "fresh" in the subject line, so, I tried "text links" -smileys -fresh and that worked too.   Now, wanting to find only pages that contain the phrase "text links", and "php" and searched for "text links" +php.   That worked perfectly, giving me 3 pages of results.   There were a few pages referencing buttons, and I don't care about buttons, so lets try "text links" +php -buttons.   I get 2 pages

So, as far as I can tell, it's working perfectly after the latest changes.

[dschwab9]

when i search for "text links"
I don't want returns of "text" or "links"
I want "text links"

And that's exactly how it's working now.   You obviously didn't try it before you posted.

I agree sorting would be a good idea, but that's an entirely separate issue.

[eleven0]

what are you searching for?

Here is what I searched.

"Hello" with "Search in topic subjects only" option checked. But the first topic's name is "Help". Plus you get 50 pages.

[dschwab9]

Hmmm, I think I'm going to have to get the devs to look at that one, but searching the subject only definitely doesn't work right.

[Assistance]

when i search for "text links"
I don't want returns of "text" or "links"
I want "text links"

And that's exactly how it's working now.   You obviously didn't try it before you posted.

when i search for "text links"
I don't want returns of "text" or "links"
I want "text links"

[dschwab9]

It highlights every occurance of any word, but, if you look at the results, each one contains the full phrase somewhere.   I actually went through all 10 pages and there wasn't a single result that didn't have the exact phrase.

[Assistance]

yes you are 100% correct
which defeats the purpose of using "quotes" in a search

if i am looking for "text links"
why is it telling me context?

why not highlight every occurrence of "text links" ?


most of the time its spent sifting through pages of unwanted results

[eleven0]

Hmmm, I think I'm going to have to get the devs to look at that one, but searching the subject only definitely doesn't work right.

Thank you, hope it gets fixed soon. It's really been pain finding stuff around here.

[dschwab9]

yes you are 100% correct
which defeats the purpose of using "quotes" in a search

if i am looking for "text links"
why is it telling me context?

why not highlight every occurrence of "text links" ?


most of the time its spent sifting through pages of unwanted results

I have no idea why it highlights like it does, but I've reported it as a big because I agree it's not right.