Search Feature needs to allow 3 chars
 

I must have missed any announcement on why the search feature was changed but it is now harder to do routine searches such as:

• AKL - as in "Hilton AKL"
• Qantas Pub - as in the familiar form of Qantas Club
• Any airport identifier

All the above searches are not permited.

It doesn't make sense to me why we would have airport identifiers restricted on a travel website.

Thanks,
Jeff

I believe small letter searches have been regulated for some time on FlyerTalk and not because we're stupid or do not understand that ATL might be important to the members of FlyerTalk. As a very frequent flyer myself, I fully understand and appreciate the importance of the vocabulary requirements of our audience. But a decision was made quite some time ago to limit these types of searches because of huge workload it places on the servers of FlyerTalk, thus we place total board performance as our first priority.

But making this decision, we did not leave members without the ability to access ATL or Qantas Pub. It has long been noted on FlyerTalk, though not as well documented as it should be, that you can access Google Search for those types of searches. In fact, I recently looked over the other large vBulletin (technology providers of the FlyerTalk engine) Web sites and they all suffer from the same problem and most other large Web sites do as we have done (or we as they have done) since the vBulletin technology engine is not a favorite for large scale search terms (as a factoid, FlyerTalk has more than 700 million words to search) and adopted Google Search from the outside. If you were to click the "search" in the blue navigation bar above this section (to the right of the MyFlyerTalk, that search has a option for "Advanced Search - Google Search" which you can use for the searches you have listed here. As I note, almost all other large scale Web sites use the same workaround ... with the same caveat that we don't like either, and that is the search results are not sorted by forum. It's all one big search, but you do get your results. For instance, I was able to search for AKL or Hilton AKL, Qantas Pub and BOS as well as DFW.

It's the best workaround at this moment and again, something that other large scale Web sites suffer alongside us.

Now, having said that, we have several new ideas to make search work better but they are frozen right now as we are in the limbo of moving servers from the House of Miles to Internet Brands in Calif. Once that server transfer is done, then we'll be able to introduce some new search options. In the meanwhile, try out the Google search because all hope (well, most of it) is not lost.

Thanks for the question, and the idea that while this information is floating around, it is very poorly documented in the FAQ, the search feature itself and other more prominent places. That means we need to do a better job of communicating this information to our members.

Cheers.

Try using * after a three letter search (akl*). It is not perfect, but it works.

I'm guessing that searching for AKL* uses more server resources than searching for AKL.

If this is the case, then a logical step would be to either:

1. Allow searches for AKL, or
2. Disallow searches for AKL*

It's not our intention to limit of disallow searches and as I hope I've tried to explain, almost all other Web site bulletin boards of the same type of traffic use we have follow the very same guidelines and practices. Our situation is even more complicated than most others since the uniqueness of this industry does require more problems with 3-letter searches than most other bulletin boards.

I know that Motor Mouth was referring to the use of a "wild card" with the asterisk. Wild cards are fairly common for all searches, whether Google or FlyerTalk and his/her suggestion simply helps everyone work a little better with the imperfect system we currently have.

Here's more about wild cards and their use in search:
Wildcard Searches are often used to enhance the precision of the search, in this case, Aukland International Airport, rather than finding all the words that might contain the letters "akl" within the word, such as Oakland or Akland, Norway.

I hope this makes sense and again, the suggestion by Motor Mouth, which is most excellent is one that helps members with precision and that is welcome within the current sue of search on FlyerTalk.

I think you're missing my point. If "AKL*" takes more resources on the server than "AKL", as well as "AKL*" being not as close to what people want as "AKL", then why encourage people to search for "AKL*"?

If people were allowed to search for "AKL", and did so instead of searching for "AKL*", then:

1. The server burden would be reduced (I think)
and
2. People would get more accurate search results.

Isn't that a win-win?

Is there really a difference when it comes to load between AKL* and AKL? I think Randy may have been pointing out that most search engines no longer look for (space)AKL(space) when AKL is typed - but for any word with AKL as consecutive letters as well. Maybe I'm totally lost, but either way...maybe there's a solution. It would require (yet another) customization of the BB software - yikes! - but...

What if we can search for 3 letter words when they are combined with another word with >3 letters? So "AKL" would not be allowed, but a multiple-word search "AKL Lounge" would be fine? Now maybe the code will break apart the two so its just even more taxing then "AKL" - but it might be something to look into?

Fun stuff.

Speaking from a computer-science theoretical point of view, searching for AKL* would not always require materially more CPU cycles than AKL, but even if it does, the difference isn't likely to be huge.

That's because search algorithms have gotten more sophisticated as computer science develops.

To illustrate this, consider a search algorithm which takes the approach that until it finds the first letter of the search string, it doesn't look for the rest. Using an algorithm like that, an AKL and AKL* search would take virtually the same number of CPU cycles.

Such an algorithm may even be optimal on those CPUs which have a hardware instruction that does a very rapid one character comparison.

Algorithm design for search can actually get pretty interesting if you are into that sort of thing!

Thanks for the expert opinion. Apparently I guessed wrong!

There is a forum devoted to such issues, called the Technical Issues forum. Take a look at the very first thread over there -- it is a sticky devoted to FlyerTalk Search issues. ;) The suggestion to use a wildcard search for a short (3 characters or less) search term was proposed over there by FT staff.

Also, the issue has been repeatedly brought up in the Suggestions forum.

(And of course, threads on this subject are also randomly scattered around various other forums as well.... But the "best" place is probably Technical Issues. @:-) )

Since I realized this, I've been trying to remember to add the full name of any city at least once in my posts.

Good Point and a great suggestion that I've been starting to do too.

I've missed some threads b/c they've only included DBV while others mention Dubrovnik.

Yep, I also occasionally add full names in posts to aid the search function, sometimes even appending a line of "searchable key words" just for that purpose.

Even if you get around searching for "SA", for example, you end up with posts about South African Airways, South Africa, South America, South Australia and a bunch of other things for which SA could be a contraction. So I reckon having the full words there will usually add value (providing the spelling is correct ;)).

Well, count me as another member who finds the current search parameters to be frustraing and really making the search function nect to useless.

Once again, have you looked at the Sticky in the Technical Issues forum? @:-)

It should be noted that ALL Search functions, anywhere, have their limitations -- none is capable (as of yet) of mind-reading. The Search feature provided by FT is actually very powerful, but you have to make the effort to learn to use it.