Search Query Limitations
 

Randy,

With the search box specifying a minimum length of four letters, how is the user supposed to search for IATA codes for airlines and airports (two and three letters, respectively)? I would think these would be the most common uses of the search box (as most posts reference airports and airlines solely by these abbreviations). The ICAO codes for airlines and airports (three and four letters, respectively) are not in common usage. Is there a workaround that I'm not aware of? I found nothing in the FAQs. Thanks for any enlightenment you could provide!

Good question. Actually, when doing a search, click on the "Advanced Search" option listed as a text link at the bottom of the Search menu.

When you go to Advanced Search, enter your search terms, including 2 and 3 letter searches in the search area at the bottom of the page, known as the "IB Beta Search." This allows you to search for these fewer letters.

This restriction was put on FlyerTalk a long time ago because of the amount of traffic and the massive number of searches members did, it severely hampered the performance of the Web site and could bring it to a crawl (OK, enter jokes and laugh track here....). However, with the resources of IB, we have Betaed a new search tool which means you no longer have to go through Google to search FlyerTalk to get around this problem.

I am told from IB that we will soon be converting to the new Beta Search as the standard search sometime soon which should resolve this limitation.

In the meantime, the woraround is to use Advanced Search.

Hope this helps and thanks for your support of FlyerTalk.

Randy

OK, I'm not Randy, but I'll add as a member of FT for more than six years that actually, the search keyword is quite often (I would venture to say usually) something other than an airport code. For example, a hotel name, a city name (spelled out), a word such as "upgrade," or "award," or "elite," or some kind of loyalty program-specific jargon ("Diamond," "Platinum," etc.). (And these are just the things that spring to mind off the top of my head.)
There is a Technical Issues forum where Search issues have been heavily discussed. In particular, there is a lengthy, stickied thread on using Search here:

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=676224

Thanks for the pointers. I wasn't aware of the existence of the support & services forum (it's not displayed in the "Jump to Forums:" graphic at the top of the page). Based on this thread, it seems I'm only about two months behind the curve:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=761583

A related question --

Until this week, I could insert my name (or any other user) into the "search by user name" function and get an insant list of all threads in which I (or the other user I entered) had participated in, with the most recently threads with activity listed first. I found this very useful, for example, in keeping track of new discussion in threads I was interested in. The new search function doesn't display results this way if you do a user search. Is there a way to get the results we used to get? Thanks!

I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but you can still search by user by bringing up search and clicking on advanced. The search by user defaults to relevance but you can change that to search by post date. Or you can click on the person's name in a post they have authored and select find more posts and the search by user defaults to post date.

Yes, but both of those methods now list threads in descending order from the user's own "post date" -- not in descending order from the most recent post in the thread by anyone (as was the prior methodology -- at least when searching under user name). So if you're trying to catch up on recent discussion in a thread in which you have participated, you no longer can easily tell whether there is a new post. Does that make sense -- and is there a fix to get it displayed "the old way"? Thanks.

The recent changes to Search are already being discussed in the Technical Issues forum. There is a thread started on Feb. 5, for example. (The folks at Internet Brands, the parent company of FlyerTalk, have been monkeying with Search and I suspect you are seeing some of the results of that.)

You can use the Forum Jump at the bottom of the page to navigate to any forum.

Thanks! I was "searching" for such a discussion and couldn't find it. :D I'll continue the discussion there. It looks like others are having essentially the same problem.