Is your Search function broken?

[Cuebacca]

I'm having trouble with the Search function:

http://forums.azbilliards.com/search.php

It seems to be doing a logical "OR" on my search terms. For example if I search for:

pool azjfdja​

I get 40 pages of results. At first I thought "azjfdja" could be a some new slang or something but when I searched on that alone, I got nothing.

Anyone else having this problem?

Edit: The search works for me if I log out before performing the Search.

 

[TX Poolnut]

The search function is working fine here. I dunno.

 

[Tbeaux]

I'm having trouble with the Search function:

http://forums.azbilliards.com/search.php

It seems to be doing a logical "OR" on my search terms. For example if I search for:

pool azjfdja​

I get 40 pages of results. At first I thought "azjfdja" could be a some new slang or something but when I searched on that alone, I got nothing.

Anyone else having this problem?

I'm surprised it gave you ANY results with pool being the only fully worded search term. Usually on ANY words I use like pool, cue etc I get a popup saying to many results and to change or modify my search terms.

Terry

 

[Quesports]

Weak

The search engine has to be the weakest link on AZ. I have never found it to work very well.

 

[Tbeaux]

The search engine has to be the weakest link on AZ. I have never found it to work very well.

Your right. What's really weird is you can search from google and limit the search to AZB and get the result your looking for.


Terry

 

[Cuebacca]

Your right. What's really weird is you can search from google and limit the search to AZB and get the result your looking for.


Terry

True! That's a great tip. I've used that a lot actually, especially when I want to search on a 3 letter word, which you can't do on the AZ search. I'll still miss the AZ search though if it's going to work this way, because it was nice searching in "titles only".

 

[JXMIKE]

You should use the search function to see if there is a similar thread.

Hope this helps.:wink:

 

[Cuebacca]

You should use the search function to see if there is a similar thread.

Hope this helps.:wink:

:shocked2: :rotflmao: :rotflmao1: :killingme: :clapping:

 

[Clark_the_Shark]

Search function sucks!!!

Who can we get to fix it? I use the logical operator "AND" and put phrases in quotes and it still doesn't come up with what I want. I get well over the amount of pages I'm looking for. Especially when I'm trying to do a title-only search.

Someone please put a call in!

 

[Cuebacca]

Who can we get to fix it? I use the logical operator "AND" and put phrases in quotes and it still doesn't come up with what I want. I get well over the amount of pages I'm looking for. Especially when I'm trying to do a title-only search.

Someone please put a call in!

Well, I'm glad to know it's not just me. Sorry it had to be you! Anyone else having this problem?

Here's an interesting workaround though... I found that if I log out, the search works fine. Does that work for you?

If some users aren't having this problem, I'm wondering if there's something in my forum settings that triggers a bug in the search. Maybe I'll play around with that later. Unfortunately I couldn't find any obvious setting that stood out to me like, "use broken search mode". LOL.

 

[CreeDo]

yeah, that's the (broken) way it has worked forever.

I don't object if it uses "blah OR blah" as the default method of searching, as long as it lists pages with both terms at the top... but it doesn't always seem to. I find that if you view results as posts rather than threads you'll be better off.

The worst part is that there is no working blah AND blah search. You can type blah+blah, blah AND blah, and whatever else you want... and the results still come up as if you typed OR. It won't limit results to posts with both terms. WEAK.

 

[Cuebacca]

yeah, that's the (broken) way it has worked forever.

Whoa! Mine never did this until after the recent major forum upgrade. Hmm. :scratchhead:

Does the workaround (logging out) work for you?

 

[Clark_the_Shark]

Logging out doesn't do anything for me... but I haven't really tested it very well either.

 

[Cuebacca]

Logging out doesn't do anything for me... but I haven't really tested it very well either.

D'oh!

This was my test:

Key Words: pool shoes
Search In: Titles Only
Show Results as: Threads

I get 4 matching threads. Yay! I can now read about pool shoes. :thumbup:

 

[Clark_the_Shark]

I just tried the exact same thing... no luck... did you put "pool shoes" in quotes? or Pool AND Shoes?

 

[Cuebacca]

I just tried the exact same thing... no luck... did you put "pool shoes" in quotes? or Pool AND Shoes?

Nope, just "pool shoes" without the quotes. This is really weird. :scratchhead:

I'm not sure what the support process is for V-Bulletin, but I wonder if this is a known issue to them. I tried searching on this, but apparently wasn't creative enough to find the right info.

 

[CreeDo]

No difference on the logout thing, it prolly just changes the default search preferences in some subtle way. I did some research. Bottom line is that vbulletin search sucks. It's groused about all the time. There is absolutely no way to search for a specific phrase that has a space between the words. You can't do pool AND shoes or pool+shoes or +pool+shoes or whatever else. You will always get a search that acts as if you said pool OR shoes. It's not a bug imo it's just a weakness of the programmer's abilities.

Also, you can try sorting results by relevancy instead of date, but it doesn't seem to matter.

There was apparently an older vbulletin with a search plugin that could do it? but nothing like that seems to exist for 3.8.1. There are handful of options that the forum administrator can tweak for search. I doubt they'll make a difference.

Best option is still something like going to google.com and typing
pool shoes site:forums.azbilliards.com

 

[Cuebacca]

thanks, Creedo

No difference on the logout thing, it prolly just changes the default search preferences in some subtle way. I did some research. Bottom line is that vbulletin search sucks. It's groused about all the time. There is absolutely no way to search for a specific phrase that has a space between the words. You can't do pool AND shoes or pool+shoes or +pool+shoes or whatever else. You will always get a search that acts as if you said pool OR shoes. It's not a bug imo it's just a weakness of the programmer's abilities.

Also, you can try sorting results by relevancy instead of date, but it doesn't seem to matter.

There was apparently an older vbulletin with a search plugin that could do it? but nothing like that seems to exist for 3.8.1. There are handful of options that the forum administrator can tweak for search. I doubt they'll make a difference.

Best option is still something like going to google.com and typing
pool shoes site:forums.azbilliards.com

There's definitely some kind of issue going on. Maybe it's a bug, or maybe I've discovered a "feature".

When I log out, it does really does do an "AND" for me, at least in the couple of tests I did. I do like using Google to search AZ for the things vBulletin can't find, but there are a couple of things vBulletin can do that Google can't, such as searching in titles only and searching posts made by a specific user.

Now that I've stumbled upon a workaround that somehow works for me, I'll give up on trying to figure it out.

 

[CreeDo]

Well let's do a test, logout and search for robocop monkey. It should only bring up one result, this post. If you can get it working properly I'm very interested in figuring out more.

 

[Cuebacca]

Well let's do a test, logout and search for robocop monkey. It should only bring up one result, this post. If you can get it working properly I'm very interested in figuring out more.

LOL @ that search string.

Sure enough, "robocop monkey" (without the quotes) turned up 40 pages of posts while logged in. After logging out, the same search only found your post.

Let me know if you have any theories you'd like me to test.

So far, the only things I've tried are changing the forum skin and making sure my preferences on my logged-in search page are the same as the default logged-out ones. No luck.