Great search, defaults bad for blood pressure

[Andre]

This site as a very nice search feature, I use it occasionally to retrieve older threads when relevant in the discussions.

So I make the selections required, user name, search term, select correct forum and hit search

The following errors occurred with your search:
1 Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.

But bad speller or not, that word is spelled right, so what is wrong? Ah... searching titles only, should be search entire posts, so select and click:

The following errors occurred with your search:
This forum requires that you wait 30 seconds between searches. Please try again in 15 seconds.

Okay, limiting server activities to keep the speed up, good thinking, ...tap...tap...click:

The following errors occurred with your search:
1 Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.

Now what's wrong again? Ah, search options two weeks ago and newer. Well, I seldom use the advanced search option for two weeks and newer, those are usually easy to find. Anyway, changing newer into older and hit search:

The following errors occurred with your search:
This forum requires that you wait 30 seconds between searches. Please try again in 10 seconds.

Okay I know, read the f page and give the correct instructions. But my avatar suggests the limits of my interlectual processing capacity and if I concentrate on answering, there are little or no grey cells left for such auxiliary cognitive activities.

Would be better for the blood pressure if the defaults were finding threads instead of titles and the time range default including a couple of months

 

[cristo]

You could use google to search the forum. In the google search box type "search term site:www.physicsforums.com". It seems to work better than the search tool on the forum.

 

[ZapperZ]

The search engine in this forum SUCKS!

Is that clear enough of an explanation?

Zz.

 

[mattmns]

The search engine in this forum SUCKS!

Is that clear enough of an explanation?

Zz.

Bingo

I second what cristo said, use google and add site:physicsforums.com

 

[radou]

You could use google to search the forum. In the google search box type "search term site:www.physicsforums.com". It seems to work better than the search tool on the forum.

Hm, useful hint, thanks!

 

[cristo]

Hm, useful hint, thanks!

Yup-- I picked it up off ranger in a thread a while ago (dont want to take too much credit for the idea ) It's useful for searching sites without search engines too!

 

[Moonbear]

The search engine in this forum SUCKS!

Is that clear enough of an explanation?

Zz.

Agreed!

Actually, the biggest problem I've run into is trying to search for a thread when the person who titled the thread couldn't spell, so my correctly spelled search query won't find the incorrectly spelled thread title. Google seems to be better at figuring out misspelled words.

 

[Mk]

Ah! I must wholehardtly agree with everything said!

If Greg fixed the search feature to be... decent I think we would all be much, much happier. Why not just put a little Google text entry bar and button there?

 

[jtbell]

Only problem is, with Google you can't look for postings by a specific person that contain specific words. I think you can get only entire threads, so at best you can get threads that the person has posted in, that contain those words (which may have been posted by someone else).

When I want to find something I've posted before, I use the site search for that reason, because I can usually remember some likely words to search for, and I usually manage to spell them correctly.