The search button hates me...

squeaky

A cry all too often heard.

For a quick and easy search the MEGA index now has enough old links in to be helpful and, over the next month or two, will collect more. It's well worth browsing regularly just to see what's there and get a feel for the layout and content range.

Of course, all the newer threads are not in there yet; so to find more recent items you'll still need to use the Search Facility.

The guide to searching has been updated by sra with a fuller pictorial layout to help us all come to grips with it.

To see the new search guide Click Here.

Bogof_Babe

Thanks Squeaky - I didn't know about the lower case criteria. So even if we are searching on a proper name e.g. Abbey National, we'd still have to put abbey national into the search field?

squeaky

Yep. I only ever use lower case for everything.

While the guide says you can use * as a wild card there are still ways you can help the system find things for you.

For example I'm pretty sure it mentions not using plurals in your search. You're much more likely to to find entries using "sweet" than "sweets" because the system will find all the "sweet"'s for you and all the "sweets".

To choose another one, in the Old Style Recipe Index or the Slow Cooker Index you can use "search this thread" and then an name an ingredient such as "ginger" and you'll get a list of all the recipes there that have ginger in. Use more ingredients in your search "ginger cabbage" (without the quotes) and you'll get fewer recipes but they'll have both ingredients in.

Then there's things like gooseberries. There's "gooseberries" and there's "gooseberry" pie... so the best thing to search on is all of the name that doesn't change. So an search on "gooseberr" (without the quotes) would find all recipes with both in for you.

Using a simple common word will get you lots of hits. If there are way too many to look through, search again with an added second word. The more words you have the fewer hits you'll get but the more likely you'll have the one you're looking for.

BUT

The more words you have the more likely it is you get no hits at all or hits that are miles away from what you want.

It's a question of finding a balance.

If you're sure of a particular phrase that you remember being in the post you are looking for then by all means write it out in full. Just remember that if you've remembered a single word wrong you won't get a hit.

So if you recall a recipe starting "Take a young aardvark and"... then you can search on that phrase and very likely get just one hit. Yay!

But if the actual text was "Take a very young aardvark"... your search will fail.

The thing is that this search has a fairly unique word in it. aardvark. So don't search on the phrase - search on the word.

You don't have to search on words that are written consecutively in a post. If you remember someone posting about "how to clean the remains of burnt potato off a pan" then pick the key words in what you can remember.

Use "clean burnt" or "burnt potato" or "clean potato" (each without the quotes)...

..see the way it works now?

Just one last thing. The system tends only to search a limited distance back so you won't see all the post that ever were that have your words in. The new version of search might - but I'm not betting any of my own money on it.

Al_Mac

What recipes are there for Aardvark?

squeaky

Try a search

Al_Mac

Bloomin eck.

"take a young aardvark, approx 8oz per person, dice, pan fry........."
Thanks, now where do I get a young aardvark?:rotfl:

squeaky

At your local aardvark shop!

RacyRed

Damnit, they send me here to do a search for the money making idea of the century and Squeaky has turned in for the night.

OK.
Shopping list
Recipe and ingredients for Jaffa Cakes
Jack Daniels
Baileys

That will do for starters

I am gonna get sooooooooo deleted

squeaky

LOL Luckily this is a temporary sticky not a permament one, so you won't get deleted, just allowed to slide into the obscurity of page fifteen

sra

The search button hates me as well - and I wrote the guide :rotfl:

no-one knows why you have to type in lower-case words - vbulletin doesn't come like thay so I assume it's something to do with the transfer system they used to move things from yabb.

I'll need to do some more experimenting on the search

I think it's useful to always put a * at the end of every search - It might be that puncutation can interfere so that a search for "ginger" would sometimes not find "ginger?" because the question mark is thought of as part of the word (will have to check that)

I also think that formatting can sometimes interfere with the search - with words that have been written in a different colour not showing in results.

If I'm searching for something I always surround it with stars just to be sure

e.g. *ginger*


And if you still can't find the thing, you can try google as it crawls this site - though only around once a week.

Go to google and type site:forums.moneysavingexpert.com followed by the word you're searching for will show goolge's results

squeaky

Actually I've been a little disappointed with the google searches. The one you used there gives 15 hits (by post) across the entire MSE site.

A simple search this forum (Old Style) gives 25 THREADS and goodness knows how many hits you'd get using advanced search and display by post.

Still, it's yet another tool in the battle to find things in our ever growing forums