Not a fan of the new quick search

[lizardboy]

Title pretty much says it all - the new search functionality has only made it more difficult for me to find the threads I'm looking for.

 

[Jason Clark]

Lizard, first off lets try and be constructive, I have no interest in helping solve an issue or concern if people can't be civil.

Next, you mean the quick search? The advanced search is light years ahead of where it was.

 

[Fern]

Hummm.. I'm not having much probs. I've noticed the look has changed several times lately.

But I post here cuz I usually do a search for me by author for last 24 hrs (1 day). My question about it is: If I post a respons today, but the OP doesn't respond for 2 or 3 days, I'm not sure I'll see it when he finally answers.

To re-state, if I search by author I'm wondering if I'l miss a chance to respond since my initial post is now over 24 hrs old. I was hoping that if anybody posted to that thread within 24hrs it would pop up with the author search.

Seems a few things have slipped through (I noticed such threads later when browsing the pages). Maybe due to work on the forums?

Fern

 

[Jason Clark]

P.S if you want to search by title alone Click the search button and choose what to search? Not hard?.

 

[olds]

Originally posted by: Jason Clark
Lizard, first off lets try and be constructive, I have no interest in helping solve an issue or concern if people can't be civil.

Next, you mean the quick search? The advanced search is light years ahead of where it was.

I agree with the civility comment. If you ban him, that will solve his search issues here at AT. A quick, easy fix.

 

[lizardboy]

My apologies - I've edited the thread title. I just found it so much easier to find threads when the quick search only searched the thread title.

 

[Jason Clark]

Ok, if enough people want it switched it's an easy change. Right now it searches both to maximize results. Title will probably miss alot of results since alot of threads dont contain the thread content or focus in either title or summary (FYI).

 

[Aves]

I prefer for the quick search to be title only but it's not that big of a deal to me either way.

This on the other hand...

 

[imported_Mike]

It makes it very difficult in the FS/FT forum as most results that the search pulls up are rather useless when searching with the "quick search" bar at the top of the page. If im searching for an item and type it in, the first hit that might pop up could be a 4 page long thread where someone else mentions the item im looking for 3/4 down on the 3rd page and has nothing to do with the seller, the OP, or really what Im looking for.

It isn't a huge issue, more of an annoyance, but if we're taking names for who is up for the old search way...put me down.

EDIT: Just found it out it also searches people's sigs which is extremely useless.

 

[bunker]

I'm leaning toward making it search just the titles myself. Find that to be much more useful for a quick search. If I want a detailed, thread content search, I use the advanced search.

 

[imported_Mike]

Originally posted by: bunker
I'm leaning toward making it search just the titles myself. Find that to be much more useful for a quick search. If I want a detailed, thread content search, I use the advanced search.

Exactly

 

[Jason Clark]

Originally posted by: CheapArse
It makes it very difficult in the FS/FT forum as most results that the search pulls up are rather useless when searching with the "quick search" bar at the top of the page. If im searching for an item and type it in, the first hit that might pop up could be a 4 page long thread where someone else mentions the item im looking for 3/4 down on the 3rd page and has nothing to do with the seller, the OP, or really what Im looking for.

It isn't a huge issue, more of an annoyance, but if we're taking names for who is up for the old search way...put me down.

EDIT: Just found it out it also searches people's sigs which is extremely useless.

This is pretty much all wrong:

1) Signatures are not searched.
2) FS/T and Hot deals AUTOMATICALLY order by date EXACTLY like it used to work.

Let's get the facts straight

 

[rh71]

I think the idea of the quick search should be titles-only. It's meant to be quick, not exhaustive in detail, right ? You would only go into advanced if you need a more focused search. I would rather it be the old way as well...

I just typed "lost" (hoping to find last night's thread on tv's LOST) in the quick search and found a few threads, and found what I was looking for near the bottom of the page. Basically I had to manually search within the search results... further made difficult because you cannot sort by date on this page. That's hardly a "quick search". In the old way, last night's thread would've been first on the results list.

 

[NFS4]

Originally posted by: rh71
I think the idea of the quick search should be titles-only. It's meant to be quick, not exhaustive in detail, right ? You would only go into advanced if you need a more focused search. I would rather it be the old way as well...

I just typed "lost" (hoping to find last night's thread on tv's LOST) in the quick search and found a few threads, and found what I was looking for near the bottom of the page. Basically I had to manually search within the search results... further made difficult because you cannot sort by date on this page. That's hardly a "quick search". In the old way, last night's thread would've been first on the results list.

I'd have to agree with this assessment. I use quick search quite often in OT to see if something has been posted so that I don't make a "repost." I searched for "eBay" before I was going to post a story about a guy filing suit over shill bidding. The search brought up a ton of results, some without even having eBay in the title.

I did a quick glance through, but it was kinda hard to keep track as nothing is sorted by date. I didn't see it, so I posted the thread. Sure enough, a few seconds later come the posts from other members saying "REPOST." Of course, I'm like WTF? So I did another quick search, and it turns out the that thread was about 3/4 of the way down the page in the search results.

I liked it the old way, but that's just me If someone wants to do a more exhaustive search, they can use the Advanced Search.

 

[Jason Clark]

We aren't going back to ordering by date as that never worked... but we can look at making quick searches search title/summary. For every other type of search, click search and customize the search.

 

[Nikamichi]

Originally posted by: NFS4

I liked it the old way, but that's just me If someone wants to do a more exhaustive search, they can use the Advanced Search.

:thumbsup:

Originally posted by: Jason Clark
We aren't going back to ordering by date as that never worked... but we can look at making quick searches search title/summary.

This, I do not understand. It always worked for me.

 

[dullard]

I have issues with the whole search system as it is (quick and advanced). Most are related to advanced though. I didn't want to make a new thread though, hope no one minds.

Applies to both:
[*]It misses things. I can post something one day and the next day do a search for my thread with the same exact words and I can't find it. Scroll through a few pages of threads and I can find it manually - including the words I used that the search failed. This appears to be a difficult problem to correct.
[*]Could we have a buttons on the page with the results to sort the results? It would be wonderful to sort by date, by original poster, or especially by forum. That way we have the best of both worlds. Use the current sort order if you like, or resort the results to meet other needs.

Applies to advanced only:
[*]The advanced search makes it very difficult to narrow down a search. For example, suppose I search through GH for a keyword with a bunch of option settings and it finds nothing. I then have to research with a new keyword or different option settings. I see two ways of doing this. (1) Use the back link on the search result page. This erases all user options - the keywords, the filtering selections, and worst of all forum categories. That is very annoying to retype all the keywords, reselect the proper forums, and recheck all the user options. (2) Use your browsers Back button. This keeps all settings except for the forum categories. My biggest complaint here is the forum categories box is royaly messed up with either of those options.

Maybe an example will help. Do an advanced search for something in General Hardware. Pretend you are not happy with the results. Click back on your browser (for IE at least this happens). The keyword is still there but ALL forum categories are selected. Click 'Clear All'. Guess what? All categories are still selected. Click 'Clear All' again. Suddenly they are all cleared. But now you have to scroll all of the way back up to the top since the scroll changes with the second 'Clear All'. Then you can reselect General Hardware, change your words or options and research. Why can't that be a smoother process? It would be wonderful if you hit back (on browser or on the back link) and actually returned back to the same way it was before. Or at least have the Clear All work on the first try. Or if that can't be done, at least don't change the scroll bar settings on the second try.

 

[Jason Clark]

Nikamichi and others, I think a lot of you are not thinking of the bigger picture of a search.

1) Searching by rank/date combined is an industry standard. Date is not the only factor in determining relevant results, check google,msn,yahoo etc they all take rank and date into account. Proof? Go to google search for ATI X800, the second hit was from toms hardware, the 6th hit was from VIPERLAIR. Toms content was formed on May 4th, 2004, VIPERLAIR's content was formed on January 17, 2005. Date is NOT the determining factor in searching. Our search engine functions no different, it takes the RANK that SQL SERVER gives back on the keyword from the index, and combines that with its insert date to produce a result ordering that takes both into account.

2) The search is not solely designed to be a tool for you to look for your own posts, although that functionality is there. Use the author keyword and combine that with keywords to find your own posts, it works. Use the today page also, those are tools designed to list your posts.

You guys are infact the minority of people that search, so think a bit more about the folks that use this as a resource. There are 4-5 times the amount of people that NEVER post here, and just search for content. Case in point, as i write this there are 714 users logged in, 3000 others are browsing and searching. Ordering by relevance and date is incredibly important to people performing those types of searchs.

 

[imported_Mike]

Originally posted by: Jason Clark

Originally posted by: CheapArse
It makes it very difficult in the FS/FT forum as most results that the search pulls up are rather useless when searching with the "quick search" bar at the top of the page. If im searching for an item and type it in, the first hit that might pop up could be a 4 page long thread where someone else mentions the item im looking for 3/4 down on the 3rd page and has nothing to do with the seller, the OP, or really what Im looking for.

It isn't a huge issue, more of an annoyance, but if we're taking names for who is up for the old search way...put me down.

EDIT: Just found it out it also searches people's sigs which is extremely useless.

This is pretty much all wrong:

1) Signatures are not searched.
2) FS/T and Hot deals AUTOMATICALLY order by date EXACTLY like it used to work.

Let's get the facts straight

I thought it searched sigs b/c of my input found a thread a searched through the first couple of pages only to find that the item was written in someone's sig. Going further into the thread I did find it in one of the posts.

I dunno why your referring about the date and I apologize if that is how my post came off. I could care less about the date really...I can read the start date and the last post date just fine. My problem is that fact that it searches the entire body and any posts there after. I would rather have it search just the title. If I want to do an in-depth search I can go through the advance option.

 

[Jason Clark]

Ok folks quick searches default to title/topic summary only.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Thanks and w/ quoting capability:thumbsup:

 

[rh71]

.

 

[lizardboy]

Cool - thanks Jason.

 

[Nikamichi]

Originally posted by: Jason Clark
Ok folks quick searches default to title/topic summary only.

Thank you for this.

 

[Kelemvor]

Just noticed that they now sort in Date Order. THANKS!!! Woo Hoo!