I have searched (pun semi-intended) and I failed to find information about this.
I've been trying to search the forums for "tumi" and "boarding bag" (That's the name of an actual Tumi product). It finds lots (and lots) of threads/posts, none of which seem to actually contain the exact phrase "boarding bag".
I also tried +"tumi" +"boarding bag" (same large set of not-actually-matches results), and also +tumi +boarding+bag (no space between boarding and the + and the bag), which interestinly returned a much reduced set of results .. still none of which contained "boarding bag".
How to search for an "exact phrase" in the Flyertalk forums?
thank you,

I highlighted in bold what I would have expected to work -- question, how are you accessing the search interface? Mobile or desktop, and which exact method?

In full desktop mode if I use the Search dropdown menu at the top (in between New Posts and Quick Links) then Search => Advanced Search



(the capital B is unimportant, I just didn't release the shift key fast enough after typing the quotation mark)

this produces only 8 results (one of which is yours and my post will probably show up at some point, not entirely sure how the forum software does its search indexing but it does not seem to be 100% realtime), which though they all do seem to mention "tumi" and "boarding bag" they aren't necessarily referring to that specific product, and also the most recent is 2019 (and most are even older than that).

Apologies, I should have included further information.
This is in Chrome on a Windows Desktop, using either the Search dropdown in the centre of the top horizontal blue menu bar (click the search dropdown, type the sample search phrases from my original post, hit enter) or the search-within-this-forum option while viewing any forum.
It is matching things that shouldn't match such a specific search phrase as +"boarding bag", e.g. it finds this thread: The way how Finnair implement the new cabin bag control
.. which as far as I can tell never contains the exact phrase "boarding bag".

Instead of typing the search terms directly in that dropdown, try selecting "Advanced Search" instead and entering the search there.

That's what I routinely do and I have had good luck with that procedure. ("Good luck" means a manageable number of returned threads.)

When I open one of the returned threads, each occurrence of any of the search terms is highlighted, even if two or more search terms are enclosed in one set of quotation marks. Apparently the algorithm that searches for threads to return is different from the algorithm that highlights search terms.

Nope, even with Search -> Advanced search: +"tumi" +"boarding bag" I still get a lot of irrelevant hits :-(

I'm confused by the + sign in your search. I don't use it, and the example Zorak posted apparently did not have it. What should it accomplish? Have you tried the search without it?

I believe the + sign is an attempt to use Google search syntax (where it forces that term to appear in the results) but I don't think it works on FT.

Agreed, searching as in my screenshot in post #2 produces only 12 results, 4 of which are in this thread and 1 of which is a new thread recently started by OP after this one (understandably, as the other hits are all very old!)

Indeed, I was trying the Google (and before that, if I recall correctly, AltaVista) +force syntax.
But in any case, when I search

I get lots of hits, none of which contain the phrase "boarding bag". (Well, two of which. But the vast majority are false-hits).
-Jay

I don't know what to say. Here are the results of my search; the screenshot includes the search terms at the top.


I only checked the third and fourth entries, but they both included "boarding bag". Interestingly, they had instances of "tumi" and "boarding bag" that were not highlighted, and many instances of "bag" (without boarding) that were highlighted, so it seems like the search function leaves something to be desired. Of course, that's not breaking news. Sorry I can't help.