Order of Search Results - No Priority - we have to live with it.

One-Eye

When search results are returned, there seems to be no logic to the order in which they are displayed. This is causing some confusion and makes it hard for users to find what they are looking for - especially when a large number of results are returned.

Please can search results be returned in a logical order such as thread creation date, and ideally can the order be selected by the user.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/search?cat=72&adv=1&search=nme
The results returned by this search are definitely random.
Date of first post, date of last post, (closing date) all seem to be ignored.
I think this is a recent change - the new forum search worked well for many weeks.
On the old forum you could specify the order of the search results.

One-Eye

Anything happening?

One-Eye

The Forum Team have asked for further details

Search might obey some algorithm that includes number of views, number of thanks or whatever in order to find “relevance”, but to users it appears totally random. If searchers can’t easily find what they are looking for they give up.

 

The most common search terms used on Competitions Time are the domain and/or the prize, and to a lesser degree the competition answer.

eg. domain https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/search?cat=72&adv=1&search=nme

eg. prize https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/search?cat=72&adv=1&search=gin

 

The most common uses of search on Competitions Time are:

1) By a poster preparing to post a competition who wants to see if someone has already posted that competition (so they avoid posting a duplicate)

2) By a poster wanting to find the previous competition from that promoter so the details and any special terms can be checked or copied (eg. Scotland only; one entry per household etc)

3) By someone entering a competition looking for a particular prize/domain so they can find the competition answer.

4) Search by username eg. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/search?adv=1&author=One-Eye&cat=72

5) By a prize winner searching for the competition they have won to check details and thank the poster.

 

In all cases the most useful order is by original posting date – most recent first. This would be the best default.

 

The NME search shown above returns threads created as shown below, and when the 4 most recently posted are hidden on page 2 of the search results it is pretty useless to users.

PAGE 1

thread by One-Eye · 21 July at 12:05PM ·

thread by One-Eye · 22 July at 12:41PM ·

thread by One-Eye · 6 July at 12:29PM ·

thread by One-Eye · 8 July at 11:43AM ·

thread by One-Eye · 9 July at 11:59AM ·

thread by One-Eye · 14 July at 12:36PM ·

thread by One-Eye · 15 July at 11:51AM ·

thread by One-Eye · 16 July at 1:14PM ·

thread by One-Eye · 17 July at 12:49PM ·

thread by One-Eye · 20 July at 1:13PM

PAGE 2

thread by One-Eye · 23 July at 11:23AM ·

thread by One-Eye · 24 July at 9:37PM ·

thread by One-Eye · 25 July at 12:35PM ·

thread by One-Eye · Today at 12:29PM **********

thread by One-Eye · 30 June at 12:44PM ·

thread by One-Eye · 7 July at 12:19PM ·

thread by One-Eye · 18 July at 12:52PM ·

thread by One-Eye · 3 June at 12:50PM ·

thread by One-Eye · 20 June at 12:37PM ·

thread by One-Eye · 1 July at 12:55PM ·

 

**************************************************************************************************

If you want to look into a totally frustrating Search try these:-

a) https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/search?cat=72&adv=1&search="yours.co.uk"

b) https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/search?cat=72&adv=1&search=yours

a) returns 813 threads

b) returns 0 threads

The result hoped for would be 16 threads including

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6172116

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6172112

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6172103

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6172101

 

thingamaBob

I agree 100% with One-eye.
It is very frustrating having to look through several pages of mixed up search results to find a particular one and this could be so much simpler if you knew the results would be in date order, preferably with most recent first. I use search on a daily basis, usually searching by Domain name and this can often produce several pages of results, particularly if searching the Game Over sub-board.

With regards to the "yours" searches, I had a need recently to find a particular competition run on the Yours web site and was rather surprised to find that search provided no results whatever when searching the word "yours". Even if searching the whole MSE forum for any post including the word "yours", search gave no results. Are there some words that are specifically excluded from search and if so what are they and why?

One-Eye

Unfortunately, the Forum Team have told me this is not a priority, but may be looked at again sometime in the future.

Didoow

Thank you for this post One-Eye, I think maybe that this recent change is the cause of something else now not working too. I had continued to use the Competitions Time board on a daily basis by using the search function but now using both top lines of the search doesn’t work. For example, previously I could put Kiss in the top line and “07/08” in the second line and it would return anything with 07/08 in the title which had the word “kiss” on the post, now it ignores the first line filter. I hope this feature can be restored too

One-Eye

Didoow said:

Thank you for this post One-Eye, I think maybe that this recent change is the cause of something else now not working too. I had continued to use the Competitions Time board on a daily basis by using the search function but now using both top lines of the search doesn’t work. For example, previously I could put Kiss in the top line and “07/08” in the second line and it would return anything with 07/08 in the title which had the word “kiss” on the post, now it ignores the first line filter. I hope this feature can be restored too

Well spotted Didoow. I also recall that using line1+line2 originally worked using the "AND" Boolean operator. I have done some testing.

line 1 = general search term
line 2 = title
line 3 = author

1+2 = completely ignores 1, searches 2 only. ie. it is not using "OR" or "AND"
1+3 = uses "AND"
2+3 = uses "AND"
1+2+3 = completely ignores 1, uses 2 "AND" 3

Using line1 and line2 should search 1 AND 2, and using lines 1,2 and 3 should search 1 AND 2 AND 3.

BootsMullery

I think that this has been amended and the search results are coming in a chronological order of thread start date/time with most recent first.

However, the situation searching for Yours is still not working and still produces no results whatever.
Searching for yours.co.uk is producing 100 pages of results, none of which actually include the word yours so it is returning a random set of results containing .co.uk. If the yours.co.uk is put in quotes, it only returns 2 results, neither of which contains the word yours.