Advanced search question

[blueorb]

I am trying to figure out how to perform a search on a particular phrase: .38 super. However, the software is pulling up anything that 38 OR super so it pulls up a ton of irrelevant results.
I even tried the Google form of ".38 super" with the quotes; no luck.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

[Mal H]

Yes - use Google for your search. To do that, you simply precede your search argument with site:thefiringline.com

As you have already seen the search engine is sorely lacking in sophistication.

[blueorb]

Ah, that worked perfectly. Thanks for the quick reply.

[Mike Irwin]

"As you have already seen the search engine is sorely lacking in sophistication."

Which is odd, given that we are such a sewphystikated bunch...

[grymster2007]

sewphystikated

That's sounds penicillin resistant!

Google search is superior by a long shot. Maybe TFL's search function should just dump one to a google search page with the site pre-filled. My organization finally did that and now we can actually find stuff.

[Mike Irwin]

Google is a lot better in most respects, but I've found that it does have some odd quirks and limitations, as well.

[Mal H]

"Maybe TFL's search function should just dump one to a google search page with the site pre-filled."

I believe we (tyme) tried that a while back and it caused some unforeseen problems. It had to be changed back to the native search engine. I don't reckymember the details.

MikePGS created a specific Google search link at THR last year. If anyone feels ambitious and wants to create one here, I'll sticky it at the top.

[tyme]

The problem inherent in google is that it will not distinguish between posts on the same page. It will tend to rank based on keyword proximity, which might give posts matching all keywords some ranking advantage, but it will not completely throw out results where, say, .38 and super occur on the same page of a thread but in different posts.

If you want to search for a phrase, like ".38 super", -then- you can use google to get reliable results. Since you're searching for one phrase and not multiple keywords, google's inability to tell posts apart won't matter.

The search engine TFL uses is the best I've found so far. It has its limitations in features, but when the alternatives are a) use google; or b) throw more servers at the problem, I think this does pretty well. It performs extremely well.

Don't forget there are also privacy implications from outsourcing searching to google. Some people hate google with a passion. What would they do if TFL's search form went direct to google?

However, the software is pulling up anything that 38 OR super so it pulls up a ton of irrelevant results.

Are you sure? I did a quick spot check and search results for .38 super seem to include both words. The engine doesn't support phrase/proximity searching, so ".38 super" won't work like it would with mysql fulltext, but in that case you can use google.