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Old January 30, 2011, 02:32 PM   #1
psyfly
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Search function questions

How do I search for a specific reference (similar to "match all words" or "match exact phrase" function)?

Example: (Real attempt). I want to find any reference to "Savage .22 Hi Power".

When I try, I get responses for every savage reference, every .22 reference, every Hi reference, and every power reference. Somewhere in there there may (or may not) be a reference to a Savage .22 Hi Power.

Help.

Thanks,

Will
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Old January 30, 2011, 02:44 PM   #2
egor20
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Use the "show post" function, you'll be able to pick and choose.

Hope this helps
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Old January 30, 2011, 10:31 PM   #3
psyfly
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egor20:

Thanks, that helped a lot. The returns appeared to actually be related to my search criteria.

Best,

Will
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Old January 30, 2011, 11:50 PM   #4
Mal H
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You can also use Google to search TFL. They obviously have a much better search engine than the one here. Simply add "site:thefiringline.com" at the beginning of your Google search string and you will only get returns from this site.
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Old January 31, 2011, 10:00 AM   #5
tyme
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Why? Google is lousy for searching forums unless you're searching for an exact phrase.

Google does not have any direct concept of separation between posts. It can only approximate "search for these keywords in one single post" by preferring keywords that are in close proximity.
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Old January 31, 2011, 10:23 AM   #6
Mal H
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Why? For the very reason psyfly pointed out in his first post. If you search for "Savage .22 Hi Power" here you will get the same results he did, the quotation marks are ignored. If you search for that string with Google, you will get returns with that string in them.

You're not seriously saying that the brain-dead search engine here is better in any way than Google's, are you?
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Old January 31, 2011, 11:06 AM   #7
Mike Irwin
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VBulletin has a search engine?

I thought it was a random results generator...
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Old January 31, 2011, 11:23 AM   #8
tyme
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Like I said, if you want to match multiple keywords in a single post, that aren't an exact phrase, you're better of using the forum's search engine.

MySQL fulltext search is theoretically better, but it's also deathly slow. vbulletin's native search is much worse, it doesn't honor quote marks either, and it will only guarantee that some of your search terms show up in each search result.

Ideally we should support matching exact phrases too, like google, but I really cannot take on any more projects right now.

This search engine SHOULD be "matching all words", psyfly. If it isn't, give me an example search and I'll look into it. It won't match an exact phrase (that I need to look into... my plate's already way too full), but it will (should) match all your keywords. I ran a search for "savage .22 hi power" and while it didn't honor the exact phrase matching like google would, all the hits that I skimmed seemed to contain all four words.

Mal, the difference with google is that if you do that search without quotes, it will only guarantee that the four words appear on the same PAGE, not the same POST.


Mike, our search engine isn't that bad, is it? You're going to make me cry.

The other options for vbulletin are mysql's default fulltext (not an option for multiple reasons --namely that it's slow and requires myisam tables--, although it DOES do exact phrase search and proximity ranking), and vbulletin's own abortion of a search engine, which is worse on all counts.
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“The egg hatched...” “...the egg hatched... and a hundred baby spiders came out...” (blade runner)
“Who are you?” “A friend. I'm here to prevent you from making a mistake.” “You have no idea what I'm doing here, friend.” “In specific terms, no, but I swore an oath to protect the world...” (continuum)
“It's a goal you won't understand until later. Your job is to make sure he doesn't achieve the goal.” (bsg)
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Old January 31, 2011, 11:54 AM   #9
Mike Irwin
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Hoomor...

U haz et notz...
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Old January 31, 2011, 12:09 PM   #10
tyme
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Orly? I had my tear ducts surgically removed years ago.
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“Who are you?” “A friend. I'm here to prevent you from making a mistake.” “You have no idea what I'm doing here, friend.” “In specific terms, no, but I swore an oath to protect the world...” (continuum)
“It's a goal you won't understand until later. Your job is to make sure he doesn't achieve the goal.” (bsg)
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