Search not working again?

serenity2012

I've noticed that doing an end date search for today and tomorrow has brought only a few comps up before it goes into game over. Fridays usually have many more comps ending and yet hardly any coming up again in search. Also on  new listings and normal listings i can bring up only 90 odd pages in total on the comp forum. Didn't there used to be hundreds? Why suddenly are there under 100 which is a tiny amount compared to other comp listings and the amount that used to be on here. Does it mean we are missing many comps that have been posted but are never showing up? Thanks for any positive help and replies  

One-Eye

Search term "02/04" "03/04" brings up 185 live comps for me.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/search?adv=1&search=%2202%2F04%22+%2203%2F04%22&title=&author=&cat=72&tags=&discussion_d=1&within=6+months&date=Today

thingamaBob

I've just done an end date search for today using this url: https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/search?Page=p7&adv=1&author=&cat=72&date=&discussion_d=1&search=&tags=&title=%2202%2F04%22&within=1+day There is more than a "few" results. 9 pages with 82 results which does seem around the number that are currently posted per day. Run with tomorrow's date gives 103 results
As to the overall forum pages, yes, there are many fewer comps being posted these days than there used to be. This could be due to many less being run these days and also because a few posters have gone "missing" and we may be missing out on a number of comps.

serenity2012

that's pretty confusing as, bob is getting  103 results for todays and tomorrows dates and one eye is getting 185 live comps for both days. I wonder why the difference. I can't find 185 live comps for the two days. I wonder if i am getting far fewer than Bobs because I've been putting E: 03/04 as I used to on the old site. For some reason that might be bringing up fewer. 

I've been clicking advanced search and then putting in E: 02/04 etc. Then I unclick replies and polls to just get the original posts.  Will try from now on to do it your way. Thanks for the  quick help guys.  I've obviously been doing something wrong. 

thingamaBob

serenity2012 said:

that's pretty confusing as, bob is getting  103 results for todays and tomorrows dates and one eye is getting 185 live comps for both days. I wonder why the difference. I can't find 185 live comps for the two days. I wonder if i am getting far fewer than Bobs because I've been putting E: 03/04 as I used to on the old site. For some reason that might be bringing up fewer. 

I've been clicking advanced search and then putting in E: 02/04 etc. Then I unclick replies and polls to just get the original posts.  Will try from now on to do it your way. Thanks for the  quick help guys.  I've obviously been doing something wrong. 

No, I am getting 82 for today and 103 for tomorrow. 82 + 103 = 185. 

One-Eye

serenity2012 said:

I wonder if i am getting far fewer than Bobs because I've been putting E: 03/04 as I used to on the old site. For some reason that might be bringing up fewer. 

You have to remember that some posters may have a typo in their title and put E 03/04 or E:03/04 without the space etc. Best search is "03/04" with the double quotes to get an exact match. You may miss a few that start E: 03/4 or E: 3/04 etc.

thingamaBob

Just out of interest, I have been doing searches on various forms of date for 03/04.
Since my first search above, there has been 2 more comps ending 03/04 added so a "03/04" search was now finding 105 comps. Exactly the same was found using "03/4", "3/04" and "3/4". I also searched for these last 3 by themselves and got no results. This would appear to mean that, perhaps surprisingly, no-one had put this date in incorrectly. 
Then when I tried "E 03/04", E:03/04" and "E: 03/04" it gave 104 results.
The extra one seemed to be https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6092721/e-06-09-family-camping-ticket-truckfest-original-newark-03-04-10 where the title reads  E: 06/09 Family Camping Ticket - Truckfest Original, Newark 03-04/10.
So in this instance, including the E: gave a better result.

Doing E: 03/04 without the quotes gave 106 results, adding in what seemed to be a completely random one of E: 31/03 that is in Game Over with the title E: 31/03? Win tix to the 20th Anniversary Essential celebration, 12/04, Albert Hall, Manchester. Presumably search, without the specifics of the quotes, was seeing the E: 31/ at the start and the 04 from 12/04 of the address which shows how the quotes can eliminate incorrect results.

It probably needs some more research to find out if there are any results missing but, generally, it would seem like search is doing a fairly good job when used properly.