Search update
 

We are proud to announce the upgrade of FlyerTalk’s search functionality. We are continuing to identify and address bugs in implementation and we appreciate your continued patience as we complete that process.

Our update includes considerable changes to both front and back end of the application. Users will now have access to all of the features available on most vBulletin forums. However, we have made extensive changes to the backend including both hardware and software upgrades. These changes will significantly increase both availability and long term scalability of the product.

Thank you for your contribution to the community and we hope you find FlyerTalk an even a better resource than ever.

This is great news but can you give some specific examples. There may be great new capabilities that I don't know exist.

Would you mind telling us more specifically what has been changed as far as search functionality goes? I believe our fellow FTers would have a better idea what to compare against and provide more constructive feedback.

Of course you know FTers are voluntarily reporting the "bugs" in the Search Problems Master thread around the clock. :D

Search does NOT work ... I'm just not buying it.

I was searching in the UA forum for any thread that has "Ask" in the title. There are ask the FA, Ask the Pilot even ask a reservation agent in there somewhere. The search found nothing, nada, zilch.

Try, try again.

seems i read elsewhere that search now (again) will NOT find a three letter word (or airport code :() unless you put the word you're looking for in quotes. theoretically, "ask" should do the trick.

I'll try that along with the Q&A that was used at least on the pilot thread, oops (but I still don't have confidence in search!)

Update: Q&A in quotes didn't work either!!

Search just seems to throw up recent random posts nothing whatsoever to do with the words entered.

I performed an advanced search for threads with "ask" and "q&a" in the titles, specific to the United forum, and both searches returned results.

It's possible the tech team already corrected the problem you uncovered and that is why I was able to find results and you were not. If you are still unable to get any results though, let me know and we'll see what you are doing differently than what I am doing.

Two ways - click on search and enter my term - hit Enter and nothing is available. Second way, go into advanced search. Put Ask into the top left field, change the selection below to be title only, select the United Forum and let it run. Also returns nothing.

I have a print screen of the selection criteria but can't post it - its in a document now if you're interested.

Mikel - I went back into the advanced and used the quotes. I did get the thread I was thinking of BUT also got an entire list of things that have nothing to do with my request, e.g. anything that started with an A or something like that.

If you enter two words, the new search looks for threads with either word in them, unlike the old which looked for threads which contained both.

To narrow results in new search requires quotes around both words with and in between.

After some considerable experimentation I've just found out the same the hard way.

For any software vendor to make such a fundamental change to the logic of a search engine (and to or) without seemingly briefing the users, is criminal.

How many hours of all of our time has this debacle wasted ?

You have GOT to be kidding me.

I know you aren't, and you're just the messenger, but...acronyms fail me.

Thanks for the info FlyingOnceMore. ^

But........In the name of the wee man they don't make things very easy do they? :D

That's how I worked it out too.....eventually.

I wish I was. I guess being 40 has some odd benefits.....I can remember search engine techniques from the 1990's!

Ah, bounded Boolean logic... those were the days.

If they could programme in inference without implicature, we'd have one hell of a search engine on our hands :rolleyes:

010011100110010101110111001000000101001101100101
011000010111001001100011011010000010000001101001
011100110010000001110010011101010110001001100010
0110100101110011011010000010000000100001

;)

So, is anyone working on "Search" or is it just completely worthless now? No matter what words or phrases, I use, I get back a list of threads that has nothing to do with anything.

hmmmm-about 10 minutes ago, i did a bunch of searches using words i knew were in posts i had made and i got correct hits on all of them.

Really? Is that in a particlar forum? This morning I was trying in particular forums and would get pages and pages of supposed hits, but those phrases never appeared in the threads. I specifically chose to look on threads with only a few responses to make sure.

yes-it was in the ua forum as there were a few specific posts of mine i needed to call up. now, i don't know if this was the reason i was successful but i was searching by poster (me) and a single key word which i thought would be in the post i was looking for.

Example. In OMNI, I do a search for "Mother's Cookies".

Among many other threads, I get:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/omni/...ah-moment.html

Neither "Mother's" nor "Cookies" nor "Mother's Cookies" appear in this or, probably, any of the other threads.

"Mother" appears in one of the link URLs, contained in that thread:

hmmmm, i just did a "short search" using just the "search this forum box" just in omni uisng a copy and paste of Mother's Cookies and this thread (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/omni/...s-cookies.html) was on top of the list.

i also did the same in the aa forum using my handle as the search term and the thread i wanted was the first one listed

but...when i search from the main flyertalk forums page, using Mother's Cookies, the results are phuglied and all over the place with your "mother's cookies thread listed third.

now i'm confused....is search only fixed by forum as that's what it looks like....

For what it's worth, my "Mother's cookies" thread was created after I did the search and posted here. I knew I had posted something in the past. I was searching for that thread. When I couldn't find it, I created a new one. Further, my search was within the forum only.

now i'm puzzled......

As KVS noted above, if a search term appears in a link, even if the link isn't displayed, the post/thread will be captured by the search.

Be aware as well that the search will essentially ignore the apostrophe in Mother's, unless you place quotation marks around the word.

Thanks. The apostrophe is the least of the issues. Maybe it's just me, but I no longer find the function useful. To get page after page of useless threads in a search is a waste and very frustrating.

Annoying. Very annoying! :mad:

I now use Google to search FT.

The search function on this site has gone from being useless to totally useless.....a joke in fact. :td:

I'm still not getting some known threads with keywords, and results being unsorted is a pain.

Your frustration is certainly understandable, but I might be able to offer a bit of assistance (I hope :p)

Try an advanced search on the terms - "mother's" cookie - (mother's in quotes, cookie not in quotes) with the following settings:

Find posts by user: ILuvParis
Sort results by: Relevancy
Show results as: Posts

When performing this search, I found 45 results.

Alternatively, you could also Show results as threads. Either way, I ended up with 45 results.

Placing only the word "mother's" in quotes helped in this case because mother is much more common than mother's.

Not perfect, but sometimes playing around with ways to narrow the result set through the use of more selective search terms and settings can lead to better results.

I hope this is helpful.

Please provide examples so that we can determine the source of the problem you are experiencing and/or provide advice as to how you might modify your search criteria to improve your results.

Thanks.

I needed your help then, not now. :D

I started a new thread at the time. I don't want to have to PM you to ask what should be in quotes on each search! ;)

No one wants that :D ;)

Hopefully, those recommendations will provide some guidance as to how you can manipulate search terms so as to improve your results with future searches.

Very generally speaking, there are two types of problems with search results - retrieving too many results or too few results. Using methods such as carefully placed quotations and addition or subtraction of keyword terms can help to resolve both. The more you play around with different terms and settings, the better you'll be able to narrow and/or expand your results.

i tried to do a search for "ambien" or "sleeping pills" and about 70% of the threads active today are returned as a result...

I think it requires mixing and matching quotation marks. ;)

I tried to duplicate your searches and did not retrieve the same results you apparently did.

Did you use quotes around the search terms? If so, if it isn't too much trouble, would you repeat the searches, take screen shots of the first page of results, and send them to me at [email protected]?

Thanks.

Hello.
I have been having trouble with the search for a long time

I just searched hilton dublin airport in the hilton forum and got everything but ---
what am I doing wrong
mike
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/searc...archid=3637511

when I tried to contact you the page would not go any further :mad:

tried searching for "napa" today (with and without quotes) using every mechanism I know how to use on FT. I was never successful in finding a recent post I knew I had seen regarding the concierge lounge at the Napa Valley Marriott. Ultimately was reading posts and ran across the post I recalled from April 1. Seems there is some problem finding all posts with "napa"?