I'm with ed1 on this - the current Search is pretty well useless to me. We can live without three character search, but this is not good. It hampers my ability to maximize FT for me as a member, and really interferes with my duties as a moderator.

Also, you have personally put in a lot of effort to edit titles and make them searchable. ^

Unfortunately, that effort is now for nought. :td:

I agree with the others; the changes to search are terrible. If this is the price for three letter searches, the price is too high.

I've got one question: Are changes like this evaluated and decided by actual users (Flyertalkers or some leadership group of Flyertalkers like the Talkboard) or are they decided solely by the technical staff?

All too often in many organizations, dramatic changes to the functionality of software are implemented by the technical staff without any real input by those who use it the most. I've seen this again and again.

I doubt the tech staff decided this on their own.

I just keep reminding myself that FT is now a FOR PROFIT business and decisions will be based upon profitability not usability.

Search no longer works at all for me.

search doesn't even work for me. It keeps showing a blank page

Amen. ^

As welcome as the three-letter search feature is -- I suspect many of us have a frequent desire to use three-letter airport codes and three-letter airplane equipment abbreviations in our searches -- any gain from its addition is offset by the loss of the search by title, search this thread, and show results as posts (not entire threads) features.

Any reason the newly-activated three-word search feature cannot be grafted onto the older search engine?

The three-character search feature is hardly "new": In the past, the minimum search term length was set to 3 (using the 'classic' search engine), then it was increased to 4.

Now, instead of simply decreasing it back to 3, the 'classic' search engine was replaced with "ibSearch from Internet Brands beta" ...

He did not say new.

He said...However, I also remember FlyerTalk having the ability to search for terms with a minimum of three characters while being powered by the vBulletin bulletin board software application program.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8700/4.1.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102 UP.Link/6.3.0.0.0)

It sure would be nice if one of the powers that be would chime in...

Ditto here.

The lack of the ability to search only titles is a HUGE loss for being able to consolidate information in forums.

Classic search is back!!
 

This is Kevin Hayes, project manager over at Internet Brands. Thanks to everyone for participating in our ibSearch beta program. You're feedback has been very helpful as we work towards creating the best possible forum search. We've gone ahead and turned the old search back on for now as we work to incorporate the features the community has requested.

The beta search is still available at the bottom of the "advanced search" page. Please feel free to continue to use the new search and give us your feedback.

Thanks!

Thank you, kevinhayes...

...and welcome to FlyerTalk!

Kevin, thanks for turning the old search back on. Please see my response to your post in the other Search thread (which should probably be combined with this one, BTW).