Suggestion Outdated Search Engine

[jtiii]

Hi, I realize back in the day search was harder and more pricey, but the whole too short too common thing has got to go! In the examples below both queries get searched as "print white"!
___________________________________________
Search Results for Query: what do you print white for

1. The following words were not included in your search because they are too short, too long, or too common: what, do, you, for

Search Results for Query: why print white

1. The following words were not included in your search because they are too short, too long, or too common: why

___________________________________________
p.s. I know what you print white for you bunch of smartasses, I was trying to make an informative example

 

[SignsSupport]

Hi jtiii - The only difference removing the short-word limit would make is to simply bring up more posts of an irrelevant nature...

It was also the default setting in vBulletin - only vBulletin doesn't doesn't acknowledge the fact. Xenforo prints a bit of a notice like:

"The following words were not included in your search because they are too short, too long, or too common: what, do, you, for"

The notice is a courtesy. The short words are actually shown and boldly highlighted in the post results as seen in the screencap below though:

The minimum length of a word that can be searched by the Signs101 search engine is currently set at 4 characters.
We'll see about decreasing the limit though.

J.

 

[Bly]

If the bulletin board search doesn't give you the results you want try putting this into google:
what do you print white for site:signs101.com

 

[jtiii]

If the bulletin board search doesn't give you the results you want try putting this into google:
what do you print white for site:signs101.com

Thanks Bly, I used to use that often but it appears google needs to crawl the site again since the upgrade; most of the search results take you to a "page not found" screen.

 

[jtiii]

Hi jtiii - The only difference removing the short-word limit would make is to simply bring up more posts of an irrelevant nature...
J.

Jacquii I respectfully disagree. I presume that if you type 'print white' (without the quotes!) you would get every thread that has print AND white, as opposed to print OR white - that would definitely give a lot of useless results! So if the words are joined with and AND then searching for 'why print white' would give many many fewer results.

The minimum length of a word that can be searched by the Signs101 search engine is currently set at 4 characters.
We'll see about decreasing the limit though.

J.

Thank you for looking at this Jacquii. I appreciate you guys being open and available as you upgrade the site!

 

[SignsSupport]

Thanks Bly, I used to use that often but it appears google needs to crawl the site again since the upgrade; most of the search results take you to a "page not found" screen.

Yes! Google is re-indexing the new Xenforo link structure, which is actually better as far as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is concerned. We have 170 lines of code implemented that tells Google to redirect old vBulletin links to the new XF link structure. We don't want to loose that link-juice. It would be quite counter-productive. About 96% of the old vBulletin links that are still in Google will redirect to actual content. Xenforo doesn't have an archive type system that vBulletin has - so some of those links may be broken.

I've just Googled "what do you print white for site:signs101.com" and only found one broken link in the first two pages. So - IDK about "most of the search results take you to a 'page not found' screen" ... It seems to me the redirect code we've implemented is working and Google is also re-indexing. So... It's a work-in-progress type of deal as Google re-indexes the 1,000,000+ posts that exist in the Signs101 database.

Jacquii I respectfully disagree. I presume that if you type 'print white' (without the quotes!) you would get every thread that has print AND white, as opposed to print OR white - that would definitely give a lot of useless results! So if the words are joined with and AND then searching for 'why print white' would give many many fewer results.

Thank you for looking at this Jacquii. I appreciate you guys being open and available as you upgrade the site!

Well - the thing is that tweaking the 4-character would require actual server adjustments be made with the entire database system being rebooted.

I'll talk to Eon Media about the options, as it's not something that I'm qualified to do. And you don't want me breaking the site LOL ... I've asked a few colleagues about tweaking the character limit to 3 or even 2 and the VAST majority have said it's not really a good idea because 1. it would be more taxing on the server, especially on a forum as large as Signs101 and 2. (as I said earlier) the search would produce more posts of an irrelevant nature. This is what the Xenforo experts have told me anyway. But again, I'll talk to Paul about the options. I'd generally not reduce the 4-character limit though...

And you're welcome jtiii - We're just trying to give you guys a site with enhanced functionality and an over-all better surfing experience than the vBulletin software provided. So we're happy to take all constructive feedback and (if possible) implement the suggestions that you guys have made. And truly - Some of the suggestions have been great and makes for a better forum!

J.

 

[Signs101Admin]

The broken link was for the ARCHIVE section of VB.

 

[SignsSupport]

As an update: Paul has actually purchased Xenforo's Enhanced Search which XF describes as, "An enhanced version of the XenForo search system, allowing higher quality results and faster searching for bigger installations." So there may be a few changes made as for higher quality search results.

I do not think at this time that we'll be decreasing the four-character limit though.
So I'll go ahead and close this thread and will re-open it when there are any further updates to add. Thanks,

J.