Forum search ??

J_B

Trying to search the forum for Collagen to see if folks have had any experience of it.

Some of the results also bring up 'collateral' and 'collage' 

Am I doing something wrong or just ..... 

MSE_James

The search function built into this Forum software is deliberately 'fuzzy' to help find variations on search terms, in case there are few or no results for the exact phrase entered.

We think it's a bit too fuzzy and have given feedback to the software providers that it could usefully be dialled down a few notches. However, the function has to be designed with the needs of many communities using the same software in mind, not just MSE. 

Putting the word or brand you wish to search for into double quotes when searching can help to produce more precise results, but is not a foolproof solution.

elsien

Agree, I find the search function on here completely useless. “Fuzzy” is not a strong enough word to describe the issues for me. It used to be a lot better before the revamp so I don’t know why the search function can’t go back to what it was before?

J_B

MSE_James said:

Putting the word or brand you wish to search for into double quotes when searching can help to produce more precise results, but is not a foolproof solution.

Thanks ... "collagen" seems to have eliminated the other wildcards!

J63320

My main gripe is that the option to sort by Newest is now useless - it’s a real pain when you are looking for that post you spotted the other day and want to refer back to, but can’t remember which board it was on.

MSE_James

I use the search sorted by 'newest' on a daily basis and nothing has changed in the last few months at least - can you give more details of the problems you're seeing? 

booneruk

You could always revert to asking google, then you can be precise on the term

https://www.google.com/search?q=site:forums.moneysavingexpert.com+"collagen"

This query forces all results to be from the forum here, and ones that definitely match "collagen". You can apply a date range filter to narrow to recent etc.

There are a LOT of competitions to wade through. Wowsers

Inforapennyinforapound

I was just about to ask a similar question. Is there a way to search a particular ‘part’ of the forum. ? For example I want to search on the Uk Days out thread for a particular part of the country I want to visit.

when I put into the search bar all I get is posts from competitions on here.

MSE_James

Yes, it is possible to restrict your search to a particular board - this link will take you to all posts containing the word "Wales" on the UK holidays (etc) board. Just change Wales to the keyword of your choice  

Note the use of double quotes to ensure results are matches for Wales - without the quotes you get gales and walking as synonyms... 

One-Eye

Inforapennyinforapound said:

I was just about to ask a similar question. Is there a way to search a particular ‘part’ of the forum. ? For example I want to search on the Uk Days out thread for a particular part of the country I want to visit.

when I put into the search bar all I get is posts from competitions on here.

Here you go:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/search?domain=discussions&query=cornwall&sort=-dateInserted&scope=site&types[0]=discussion&types[1]=comment&categoryIDs[0]=80&includeChildCategories=true&source=community

just change the search term from cornwall to whatever you want