Many times when I try to do a search, the results are not good. Often, this is because the search function will discard words that are "too short", "very common" or "too long". However, often these are important key words for a search. In addition, placing quotes around a set of search terms to indicate an exact match of that string is desired does not work (as it does with many other search functions).

An example:
I wanted to find a thread for which I knew the exact title ("R" class comes to NW). I entered the exact thread title into "search this forum" in the NW forum, and here is my result:

Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.

The following words are either very common, too long, or too short and were not included in your search : comes, to, NW

So, I tried Google. Typing the same thing (exact thread title) into Google yielded the following link:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/archi...-497-p-37.html

and lo and behold, on that page, the thread I was looking for is found (#9097)!

Shouldn't FT's internal search be good enough that users don't have to use a different site to find what they're looking for?

Edited to add: Oops! Just noticed there is another 'search' thread in the forum already--sorry, given that I was frustrated by poor search functionality, I didn't bother searching 'search' before posting. Feel free to move into the other thread.