Lack of search functionality
 

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.

Unfortunately there are some limitations to the forum search, we are planning on a software and hardware upgrade in the near future for FlyerTalk that we hope will alleviate some if not all of these problems. Thank you,

search
 

i did too notice that the search function is getting worse and worse.
i think this might be a good sign for flyertalk, that there are a lot of threads and that the community is growing.

the backside of growth is , that the system you are using is not sufficent and that IT systems have to be adjusted in general.

i hope that FT admins are able to implement a better search function in the near future, as we are spamming FT more and more with threads.


in the mean time, i think that stickies will be the way to go, in which all important threads can be implemented. maybe a FT Wiki might be useful , is there any already?

dp

There is an FT Wiki and members in the American AAdvantage and Northwest WorldPerks forum, as two examples, have begun using it to their advantage. The Wiki is still relatively new, but we think the potential is there for it to provide a great deal of ancillary benefit to the forums.

Search has been misconfigured some time recently!
 

One thing that has happened to Search (probably inadvertently) is that it seems to have been configured to default to "All Open Forums" instead of the particular forum (such as Starwood) that you are in. This is NOT a reasonable default. Most of the time, one is searching within a particular forum, rather than across all of them.

To get around this, you have to click "Advanced," then select (for example) "Starwood Preferred Guest" instead of "All Open Forums."

Probably most FTers don't realize this, either because they never use Advanced search (I always use it), or because they don't happen to notice which forum is selected. @:-)