Search Problems

[chrisnotton]

Can anyone make the search work properly?

For example I can search text that I have cut and pasted from posts and not find the post with a search. Or I can try and search for a post containing (for example) "Permessi in Brindisi" & the search finds posts containing "Permessi OR Brindisi" I have tried using logical symbols "+ &"" -" etc. as per google/Ebay etc but no joy.

Also the search function seems to decide that small words are two common to search for.

Any insights would be appreciated

[Nielo]

I find the same Chris and that is why I would never criticise a new member for not finding something.

I hope the tags system will be a better way of finding information but it will depend on people putting the tags on in the first place. Also once something is tagged say as 'restoration' it will not show a useful snippet mentioned somewhere in the thread on ' door sizes' unless someone trawls carefully through and adds another tag.

I don't know what the solution is and would welcome advice from anyone who does find the search facility and easy to use option.

[pigro]

I know what you mean, the inbuilt search is very inflexible, really only of use for search with one key word (or for finding posts by member name, timeframe etc.).

Don't want to teach my granny to suck eggs but you can use google to search the italymag website (and therefore the forums)?

You can do so directly from google homepage by adding "site:www.italymag.co.uk" to the query as per this link:

site:www.italymag.co.uk "(for example) "Permessi in Brindisi"" - Google Search

but you can acheive the same thing directly from Italymag by using the inbuilt google search at the top right of each page on the site (entering your query there negates the need to specify the site, obviously!).

[pigro]

err (starts discussing with self, never a good sign!) ... I typed the above, did a quick demo google for the link & thought no more about it ... but then I decided to use the technique I'd just explained to search for something else & it didn't work.

Playing around a bit further, it looks to me that the google search is returning very patchy results too ... the example I used works fine but loads of others don't (some being very old posts, some being very new, so no apparent pattern). It does look like it will find any text in this area of the forum (announcements & queries) but not in most others ...

Maybe Ronald has - by accident or design - exluded large parts of the forum from being indexed by google (rather than just the Circolo di Conversazione, which I know is purposely excluded). Over to Ronald ....

[Gala Placidia]

I have experienced the same difficulties mentioned here. I thought it was all my fault!!!! Seeing that you all had the same problems reassures me. But still, it is very difficult for new members if we just tell them to have a search on a particular topic. I hope that a solution will be found.

[chrisnotton]

Originally Posted by pigro

err (starts discussing with self, never a good sign!) ... I typed the above, did a quick demo google for the link & thought no more about it ... but then I decided to use the technique I'd just explained to search for something else & it didn't work.

Playing around a bit further, it looks to me that the google search is returning very patchy results too ... the example I used works fine but loads of others don't (some being very old posts, some being very new, so no apparent pattern). It does look like it will find any text in this area of the forum (announcements & queries) but not in most others ...

Maybe Ronald has - by accident or design - exluded large parts of the forum from being indexed by google (rather than just the Circolo di Conversazione, which I know is purposely excluded). Over to Ronald ....

Yes I didn't have much more luck with Google than you. I am trying to find a thread called "a tale of two communes" or similar, to show a friend who is having trouble with her commne ASUL and searching with only one of the kewords give hundreds of results. There doesn't seem to be a way of refining the results.
Most frustrating when there is such a treasure trove of info on this site

Pip pip

[pigro]

how about

http://www.italymag.co.uk/forums/leg...o-comunes.html

[Nielo]

well done Pigro could you say what you did to find the thread so the rest of us know what sort of conbination of words to use in a search?

Ta.

[pigro]

well I cheated a bit ...

I first chose 'advanced search' from the search drop down. Then I searched for 'comune' using the 'search title only' option, searching all open forums (with "child forums" checked too) and specified results to be ordered by relevance and shown as threads (not posts) which limits the number of results to a more manageable amount. That only gave a few results (and not the one Chris wanted).

I happened to remember that Marc had been involved in that thread, so I repeated the same search but this time I also entered Marc into the user field (with 'excact match' checked) but all other criteria as before.

That gave no results at all, so I then changed from 'search titles only' to 'search entire posts' - which returned quite a few threads, but the one we were looking for was on the first page of results.

so, basically it's a pile of pants & doesn't at all do what it says on the tin, as the word 'comune' WAS in the title but it wasn't returned by a 'search titles only' search.

NOTE however that in this case a google search would have worked (if Chris had spelled comune correctly with one 'm' instead of two ... albeit it returned a link to the archive rather than the live forum:
site:italymag.co.uk "a tale of two comunes" - Google Search

.. .and entering "tale of two comunes" in the google search on the site returned the thread as its 3rd result.

[pigro]

i wonder whether the fact that the thread appears in the site archive may explain why it wasn't found by the inbuilt search on 'comune' in the title ?