MSE forum search facility

VXman

I recently had my new thread merged with a currently ongoing thread on the same subject. I had searched for this topic before I posted and found nothing.

Generally I find the search facility pretty useless - brings up random results, often 5 years old or more. Why is it so bad?

MSE_James

My two tips for better search results would be:

- put key words or phrases in "double quotes" like that to find exact matches (otherwise the fuzzy matching of search terms is a bit ... over-generous). 

- use the toggle to order your search results by 'newest', rather than the default 'best match'

It's a difficult balance, because we have more than 20 years' worth of content in the index, some of which is timeless and worth surfacing now, and some threads where how recent the info is is much more important.

We have given feedback to our software suppliers about the particular search needs of the MSE community, but the software also needs to work for smaller communities where finding a partial or more tenuous match to a search query is more helpful to the user than it is here, so the software providers are also trying to strike a delicate balance between competing needs.

double_dutchy

VXman said:

Generally I find the search facility pretty useless - brings up random results, often 5 years old or more. Why is it so bad?

I had a similar experience, especially when I wanted to search for "Excel" (spreadsheets) but not get a load of results about Excel (Parking company). 

I now use Google, you can limit the seach to MSE forum, e.g. the following search

excel -parking site:forums.moneysavingexpert.com

That searches for "Excel" but excludes posts including the word "parking", exclusively on this forum. I also add in a timeframe, e.g. "last month"

MSE_Stephen

Hi

The search isn't currently as great as it could be. 

In theory you should be able to use double-quotes for a bit more precision as MSE_James mentioned, but that can still find partial words - I was checking with our provider if this could be improved just yesterday. 

For now I'd suggest taking full advantage of the filter options in the sidebar (Unfortunately, these are collapsed under the title "Filter Results" if you are using mobile, so it's easy to miss you have these options).

I've also added below some advanced exact matching tips. In the new year we can add these tips somewhere a little more prominent. 

Exact-text matching

Get more accurate search results with exact-text matching and basic boolean operators:

• To find an exact word or phrase, use quotation marks (e.g., "release notes").

• To exclude a term from your search, use the - symbol (e.g., "release"-"notes").

• To find content with multiple queries, use the + symbol, (e.g., "release"+"2021"+"api").

double_dutchy

MSE_Stephen said:

• To exclude a term from your search, use the - symbol (e.g., "release"-"notes")

Hi MSE_Stephen,

Did you get this to work?

Using the example in my previous post, when I use google to search using the following

excel -parking site:forums.moneysavingexpert.com

and restrict to the "past month" I get 8 hits (and none including references to parking) but when I use your suggestion, e.g. searching for "excel"-"parking" (and restrict to created in last month) in the search box here I get 221 hits, many of them including "parking" (and also "excellent")

MSE_Stephen

double_dutchy said:

MSE_Stephen said:

• To exclude a term from your search, use the - symbol (e.g., "release"-"notes")

Hi MSE_Stephen,

Did you get this to work?

Using the example in my previous post, when I use google to search using the following

excel -parking site:forums.moneysavingexpert.com

and restrict to the "past month" I get 8 hits (and none including references to parking) but when I use your suggestion, e.g. searching for "excel"-"parking" (and restrict to created in last month) in the search box here I get 221 hits, many of them including "parking" (and also "excellent")

Hi again

Yes - This is definitely an issue we're aware of. 

The default (no quotations) looks for similarly constructed words in the hope of finding relevant variations.
The exact match (quotations) should, according to the recommendations I quoted from our provider, give exact matches, but it seems that it still tries to be 'helpful' by also showing words that start with your keyword. 

We have already given feedback to our provider and asked them to look into this. 

One-Eye

MSE_Stephen said:

The exact match (quotations) should, according to the recommendations I quoted from our provider, give exact matches, but it seems that it still tries to be 'helpful' by also showing words that start with your keyword. 

We have already given feedback to our provider and asked them to look into this. 

It should, but it doesn't. 

You have to be a little smart with your search terms to get it to do what you want.

A recent example I used (on competitions time) was to search for the outdoor clothing brand PARAMO
"PARAMO" returned numerous results for Paramount with the first Paramo being the 47th result.
"PARAMO"-"PARAMOUNT" was much better but had a few results containing Paramore (the band)
"PARAMO"-"PARAMOUNT"-"PARAMORE" did what I wanted it to do in the first place.

Eco_Miser

One-Eye said:

MSE_Stephen said:

The exact match (quotations) should, according to the recommendations I quoted from our provider, give exact matches, but it seems that it still tries to be 'helpful' by also showing words that start with your keyword. 

We have already given feedback to our provider and asked them to look into this. 

It should, but it doesn't. 

You have to be a little smart with your search terms to get it to do what you want.

A recent example I used (on competitions time) was to search for the outdoor clothing brand PARAMO
"PARAMO" returned numerous results for Paramount with the first Paramo being the 47th result.
"PARAMO"-"PARAMOUNT" was much better but had a few results containing Paramore (the band)
"PARAMO"-"PARAMOUNT"-"PARAMORE" did what I wanted it to do in the first place.

"PARAMO " (with a space) gets rid of all the PARAMOUNTs AND PARAMOREs but will miss any PARAMO. or PARAMO, or PARAMO? - but these can be searched for separately.

MSE_Stephen

Eco_Miser said:

One-Eye said:

MSE_Stephen said:

The exact match (quotations) should, according to the recommendations I quoted from our provider, give exact matches, but it seems that it still tries to be 'helpful' by also showing words that start with your keyword. 

We have already given feedback to our provider and asked them to look into this. 

It should, but it doesn't. 

You have to be a little smart with your search terms to get it to do what you want.

A recent example I used (on competitions time) was to search for the outdoor clothing brand PARAMO
"PARAMO" returned numerous results for Paramount with the first Paramo being the 47th result.
"PARAMO"-"PARAMOUNT" was much better but had a few results containing Paramore (the band)
"PARAMO"-"PARAMOUNT"-"PARAMORE" did what I wanted it to do in the first place.

"PARAMO " (with a space) gets rid of all the PARAMOUNTs AND PARAMOREs but will miss any PARAMO. or PARAMO, or PARAMO? - but these can be searched for separately.

Just came here to post. You beat me to it
Eco_Miser

Using a space with quotes to make the search more exact is a feature just released a couple of days ago.


Please let us know how this works and if it helps. More work is planned for the future to help find exact phrases.

One-Eye

MSE_Stephen said

Using a space with quotes to make the search more exact is a feature just released a couple of days ago.

Please let us know how this works and if it helps. More work is planned for the future to help find exact phrases.

Thanks - it seems to be working as it should, but it gives you a further annoying problem.

eg. Searching "PARAMO " (with a space) does NOT return instances of "PARAMO," (with comma) nor "PARAMO." (with full stop) ie. it must be followed by a space (or carriage return). This makes it of limited use for accurate searching.

MSE_Stephen

One-Eye said:

MSE_Stephen said

Using a space with quotes to make the search more exact is a feature just released a couple of days ago.

Please let us know how this works and if it helps. More work is planned for the future to help find exact phrases.

Thanks - it seems to be working as it should, but it gives you a further annoying problem.

eg. Searching "PARAMO " (with a space) does NOT return instances of "PARAMO," (with comma) nor "PARAMO." (with full stop) ie. it must be followed by a space (or carriage return). This makes it of limited use for accurate searching.

Thanks @One-Eye

I've been told that Search is being constantly worked on and improved - and that this isn't intended to be the end solution, just a small improvement to help for now.

Before this fix, searching, for example, for smi and sorting by Newest, was almost impossible without pages of 'smiles'. 
But. As you note, this might still miss out some results.