Search Function Unreliable

Toothsmith

Can someone please help me?

I usually give help & advice on dental matters.

These mainly come up on the Health board. But occasionally on others.

To try and find any, I usually search terms like 'dentist' 'dental' 'hygienist' etc.

Recently though - I'm finding this very unreliable. A lot of the results I get are not related - even when I then 'search thread' I can't find any dental/dentist references. Also - threads which are very relevant simply don't appear in my results (I come across them days or weeks after they have been started.

Anyone know what's going on / where I'm going wrong??

Thanks

Former_MSE_Andrea

Hi Toothsmith

Can you tell us

• When did this start happening?
• What browser and version are you using?
• Which Forum version are you using - old green or new blue?
• Are you searching the whole Forum or the individual board?
• Are you using the Forum search box (provided by Vbulletin) or the search box on the Main site that allows you to search the main site or Forum?

Toothsmith

Hi Andrea,

Not sure when it began. I've been aware in the last couple of weeks that there are threads going on that I've been unaware of from my usual keyword searches.

I use Google Chrome, but not sure what version. It's the older version of the site I'm viewing, but I'll try switching to the new version.

My searches use the search box on the Health & Beauty board.

Toothsmith

I've tried it on the 'new' site now.

A lot of my search results seemed the same as before.

This thread came second in the search result. The one that came above it last mentioned the word 'dentist' on 11 Jan.

Usually, the threads had ordered themselves into most recent mention first - so I suspect all is not well still.

Former_MSE_Andrea

Thanks Toothsmith, we're aware the forum search can be glitchy. I'll see if I can replicate this.

Former_MSE_Andrea

I've just searched the Health & Beauty for "dentist" as a start.

It's found 300 threads (the maximum it can).

18 of the first 25 results relate to dentistry/dental/teeth, the rest are generally long-running health-related threads eg the Frump to Fab, Slimming World or losing weight threads, which I would expect to include a mention of something teeth-related

fermi

Search is working as it always has for me.

Have never been able to order thread search results by the newest occurrence of the actual search term, but simply by 'Last Posting Date' on the thread which is any post including or NOT including the search term.

As Andrea says, the vBulletin search, that is unfortunately part of the forum software used here, is glitchy at best but as far as I know with the version used here there has never been the option to order in the way described.

fermi

If you want to search for the latest occurrence in posts in a forum, you would need to select to show the results as posts as well.

e.g. on the quick search "show posts" selected.



Or similar if using the advanced search

Former_MSE_Andrea

A forum-wide search for "dentist" brings up two relevant threads on the first results page - this one and Dentist NHS charges.

The majority of others are long-running threads where, again, I wouldn't be surprised that the word "dentist" would be mentioned.

Toothsmith

fermi wrote: »

If you want to search for the latest occurrence in posts in a forum, you would need to select to show the results as posts as well.

e.g. on the quick search "show posts" selected.



Or similar if using the advanced search

Thank you both.

Yes - it was when I started using 'search posts' rather than 'search threads' that it came up with topics I'd completely missed before. I think I will do this in the future.