Improving Phrase Search on PF: A Solution for More Accurate Results

[WiFO215]

When I search for things on PF, quite often I find myself searching for a phrase rather than for a single word. However when the results return, PF seems to have searched for any ONE of the words which could have different meanings by themselves. For instance, my most recent search was for 'Derren Brown' (a person) and the search returned results which included simply the word 'brown' which has no correlation to what I was searching for.

Could you please include an option which says "search for the full phrase/ search for any word in the phrase to return as results" and then we could pick one of the options. It would make it far more convenient.

Please and thank you.

 

[Monique]

It is a good suggestion, I wonder how much work it would be to implement.

In the meantime you could use google to search for phrases:
site:physicsforums.com "derren brown"

Just make sure to order the results by date, to avoid reviving long-lost threads

 

[WiFO215]

It is a good suggestion, I wonder how much work it would be to implement.

In the meantime you could use google to search for phrases:
site:physicsforums.com "derren brown"

Just make sure to order the results by date, to avoid reviving long-lost threads

That's what I've been doing till now.

 

[tiny-tim]

If I do a forum search for "derren brown" (with the quotes marks), I get the same as for a google search …

or is that because I'm a PF contributor?​

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

If I do a forum search for "derren brown" (with the quotes marks), I get the same as for a google search …

or is that because I'm a PF contributor?​

Advisors and Contributers have boolean searching which includes quoting

 

[tiny-tim]

search-by-phrase

Advisors and Contributers have boolean searching which includes quoting

Perhaps this could be made clearer, to encourage contributing?

"search-by-phrase" rather than (or in addition to) "boolean searching"?

And maybe give that info in the Search drop-down menu, as well as in the Upgrade one?

 

[tiny-tim]

On the subject of booelan searching, I just tried a boolean search for "inertia -moment", which should give all threads with "inertia" but without "moment" …

but it doesn't.

(and yes, I did try the google site method, but that gives me every post, which is really inconvenient)

 

[WiFO215]

Can you guys add the option not to search in subforums? For instance, sometimes I might want to just search the Academic Guidance forum and not the Science Book discussions. When results pop up from everywhere, it becomes hard to skim though everything sometimes.

 

[Evo]

Can you guys add the option not to search in subforums? For instance, sometimes I might want to just search the Academic Guidance forum and not the Science Book discussions. When results pop up from everywhere, it becomes hard to skim though everything sometimes.

Did you deselect the default, which is to search in child forums?

 

[WiFO215]

Is it possible to use Google to search in a specific subforum?

 

[Redbelly98]

Is it possible to use Google to search in a specific subforum?

I don't see any way to do it. There is no url that is both common, and unique to, posts in a specific subforum. So using the "site:xxx..." trick at Google doesn't work.

 

[WiFO215]

This is getting silly. If I search for WKB on the PF search engine, it says
1. Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.

How ridiculous.

 

[cristo]

This is getting silly. If I search for WKB on the PF search engine, it says
1. Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.

How ridiculous.

I think a search term needs to have four or more characters. You should just use google for this specific search.