Please help MSE test NEW search facility

Former_MSE_Dan

Hi folks,

We have been working for a little while to improve the search facility of the main MoneySavingExpert.com site, to help our users find what they are looking for more quickly - and hopefully make it a bit more aesthetically pleasing too. NB this is currently only for searching guides etc on MSE, not the forums.

Before we make it live for everyone, we'd love it if anyone with two mins to spare could give it a go and tell us any feedback (see below for how to turn it on for your computer).

What we are really interested in is:

1) Did it find what you expected? If not, please let us know what you were looking for and what result it returned.

2) Did you get any duplicated results? We noticed this during the early testing stages and fingers-crossed we have ironed it out now!

If this happens, it would be great if you can let us know what internet browser and operating system you are using.

3) How do the results look? Let us know if anything seems wrong or out of place. if you could post a screenshot of this that would be brilliant.

Plus anything else you feel like letting us know

How to turn it on:

So that the new style search works on your computer, we need to put a 'Cookie' on your machine. To do this, click this link

Link 1: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/searchStop.php?cookie=1

To turn off the Cookie (ie, revert back to the old style search), click this link

Link 2: http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/searchStop.php?cookie=2


How to use the new search:

Once you've enabled it using the links above, just type something in sthe search box at the top right of any page on this site. Make sure the little drop down menu to the right of the search box is set to 'Main Site', otherwise it won't work.

Thanks for your help folks

Dan

KingL

Hi

What's the search syntax supposed to be ?

it seems like searching for firstword secondword only returns results for firstword (certainly only firstword is bolded in the results)

searching for "firstword secondword" (with the quotation marks) sometimes returns results for firstword secondword, as expected e.g. "fixed rate", (only firstword is bolded), and sometimes doesn't ("free software" returns results for 'free' only)

it seems that if there are no results to find for "firstword secondword", it just returns results for firstword. Is that intentional? (example "Western Digital")

Excluding terms (google syntax) doesn't seem to work (e.g. "fixed rate" -mortgage) includes results with mortgage in

The title for the for the section of results from News reports is titled News Stories for \"firstword if quotation marks were used in the search criteria. secondword isn't mentioned whether quotation marks were used or not.

it places a backslash in the searchbox after completing a search (which isn't the end of the world!)


perhaps you could give a few notes about search syntax and what you do and don't expect it to do (e.g are you intending that it only searches on one word?)

XPSP3, Firefox 3.6.10

ta

.

emiff6

I typed in: isa - first page good results - page 3/4 nine duplicates of one site. Then I tried: individual savings account - 3 relevant sites out of 41. Seems to be a one word search engine right now.

judexx

When you do a 2 word search eg Cashback sites, you sometimes get a letter 'A' with a symbol over it between the 2 words in the 'News Stories' section (I suspect it may represent 'AND' ??)

marleyboy

As above, it seems to be limited to one word searches, I typed in "Saving Money" and "Money Saving" and got two completely different results. It uses the first word as the keyword. The original method is still my preference, as this searches for both keywords, effectively narrowing my searches.

meher

absolutely brilliant the search captures the blogs too - I liked it thanks

no search issues at all - there was an option to search just blogs and they too came up with a fine set of results on a very tidy page

just that the odd image wasn't loading

I searched natwest from vista using IE8.

my screenshots

natwest

natwest in the blog search

meher

Just noticed, the word next doesn't fade off when the search is done. For eg. if you have 3 pages search and after 3 pages, it still shows next. So you'd automatically assume you've more search results pending. You click on next and the last page just reloads, so that would appear like repetition, when in fact the search results have ended. Probably the next button needs fixing.

Former_MSE_Neil

emiff6 wrote: »

I typed in: isa - first page good results - page 3/4 nine duplicates of one site. Then I tried: individual savings account - 3 relevant sites out of 41. Seems to be a one word search engine right now.

Thanks - i think this is now changed behave as before

KingL wrote: »

Hi

What's the search syntax supposed to be ?

it seems like searching for firstword secondword only returns results for firstword (certainly only firstword is bolded in the results)

searching for "firstword secondword" (with the quotation marks) sometimes returns results for firstword secondword, as expected e.g. "fixed rate", (only firstword is bolded), and sometimes doesn't ("free software" returns results for 'free' only)

it seems that if there are no results to find for "firstword secondword", it just returns results for firstword. Is that intentional? (example "Western Digital")

Excluding terms (google syntax) doesn't seem to work (e.g. "fixed rate" -mortgage) includes results with mortgage in

The title for the for the section of results from News reports is titled News Stories for \"firstword if quotation marks were used in the search criteria. secondword isn't mentioned whether quotation marks were used or not.

it places a backslash in the searchbox after completing a search (which isn't the end of the world!)


perhaps you could give a few notes about search syntax and what you do and don't expect it to do (e.g are you intending that it only searches on one word?)

XPSP3, Firefox 3.6.10

ta

.

The syntax should be the same as the google ones. I shall have a look at the backslash stuff as i suspect that is becoming corrupted in the query, as well as the minus query. I'm not sure whether that worked before?

hopefully the firstword/second word issue is resolved now (see above)

meher wrote: »

Just noticed, the word next doesn't fade off when the search is done. For eg. if you have 3 pages search and after 3 pages, it still shows next. So you'd automatically assume you've more search results pending. You click on next and the last page just reloads, so that would appear like repetition, when in fact the search results have ended. Probably the next button needs fixing.

Will be working on this now.

Thanks for taking the time out to look at this, its much appreciated!

Neil

Former_MSE_Dan

Thanks a lot folks, this is really helpful. Keep em coming!

marleyboy

Excellent!!!! The First\second word is fixed, its very quick and the search display is neat n tidy, good work MSE team :D

meher

That's fantastic. I did an American Express search a well last night and lots of pizzas came up. It got confusing and I thought I might be seeing things since it was too late. The search today, however appears a lot more refined now, probably because you fixed the words. But looks like the blog titles occasionally doesn't seem to show up as in here and here. It seems to be slightly variable in the content - sometimes there's a title, somtimes just the highights, at other times none as in the screenshot; likewise, if it's ok to add, the images on the blog search too seem to be variable.