Well, am I beating a dead horse?

[broni]

I'd like to know, if there are any plans regarding horrible IPB search.
In its present state, it's simply useless.
It finds nothing, zippo.
I mean, it does find a lot of things, but totally irrelevant to what was put into search window.

I love IPB board, but the search is just NOT acceptable.

[Mat Barrie]

The search uses MySQL. If you have problems with search, go complain to the people at MySQL about it. IPS uses out of the box code to achieve everything.

If you'd like a better search experience, IPB supports replacing MySQL search with Sphinx, with just a click or two in the ACP. Install Sphinx, and I think you'll find all your member's complaints just disappear. Faster too. They won't install Sphinx here though, as this site is meant to accurately reflect what most people will have out of the box.

[broni]

If you have problems with search, go complain to the people at MySQL about it

I'm sorry, but I pay for IPB product.
If I bought a new car and a horn doesn't work, are you going to send me to horn manufacturer?

I've read on this very forum from people, who switched to Sphinx and it's not much better.

[3DKiwi]

So what's not working? All very well to rubbish the search but you need to say what isn't right.

I just find it unintuitive for the average forum member to use. For example if I want results with both words I need to put a plus sign in front of each one.

3DKiwi

[broni]

Just a simple example.
I search for:
how to install Sphinx

This is what I get:


Garbage, isn't it?

Surely, very exact topic,

How to install Sphinx with IPB
is right here:


Surely, IF I knew exact topic name and IF I searched for "how to install sphinx" (with quotes), here you're:


but this is not what the search is for.

If I use Google and I search for ipb 3 sphinx search (no quotes, or "pluses"), all relevant hits are there.
So, why IPB search can't find it?

[3DKiwi]

I would have done a search on "install sphinx" using the quote marks.

However I think what the issue with is the results show highlighted "to". That just happens to be one of your search words therefore it gets highlighted. If you click on that result you will in fact find "how to install sphinx". Perhaps a more desirable behaviour when doing phrase searches is that only the searched for phrase is highlighted.

3DKiwi

[Mat Barrie]

Because IPB search is MySQL search. MySQL search isn't very good. You'd have the same problem with vBulletin, phpBB, Wordpress, Joomla, or anything else for that matter.

I'm going to say the solution is to use MSSQL. There you go. And your example is terrible, because you'd go back to the car manufacturer because they have spares.

There is a [url=" already for an actual way to improve IPB's implementation. And a reply from Matt saying they are implementing that suggestion in 3.1. Ironically, perhaps you should have searched before posting this pointless thread.

[broni]

Look, we're not talking here about brain surgery.
This is not early '90s, when to find something, you had know, what word goes first, where to put quote, where to put plus, or minus sign.
This is 2010 and all reputable search engine employ plain text search.
If Google can find exact match going through billions of pages, how come IPB search is not able to find any match searching through hundreds of pages?
My search string contained FOUR exact words out of SIX words from topic title and still....no match.
It's simply a failure, whatever you want to say.

[broni]

Ironically, perhaps you should have searched before posting this pointless thread.

Surely, I'd find it.
...and please, don't tell me what is pointless, or not...I'm not 5 years old.

[Ditchmonkey]

The search uses MySQL. If you have problems with search, go complain to the people at MySQL about it. IPS uses out of the box code to achieve everything.

Thats a ridiculous answer. Vbulletin also uses Mysql but is able to come up with reasonable results. IPS has even conceded that the results are less than satisfactory and has stated they are making improvements. If you would like to know more specifics of what is terrible about the current search system, read the numerous complaint threads about it by myself and others. You could try searching for those threads :whistle:

[broni]

You could try searching for those threads

Nice....LOOOOOOOOOOOL

[Mat Barrie]

Yeah, that part was rather needless. Nonetheless, that thread I linked does indeed provide the solution to making search suck much less, and it's already been accepted for implementation in 3.1. So yeah, this thread really isn't going anywhere.

[broni]

You'd have the same problem with vBulletin, phpBB, Wordpress, Joomla, or anything else for that matter.

Proof?
I have one...

Just went to one of the forums, I belong to: http://www.computerhope.com/forum/index.php
It runs on vB.
I opened random forum:


and I'm searching for:
side by side configuration is incorect
no quotes, no pluses, no minuses, no hocus-pocus

Results:



So, there you go...

[broni]

What do you mean by "this thread really isn't going anywhere".
This is IPB feedback forum and very right place to talk to IPS people about what we like, or what we don't like.

[Mat Barrie]

This thread isn't going anywhere, because you're complaining that search sucks - from your comments it would appear becuase they take the incorrect path of using the MySQL default to search the query - ORing the words. In 3.1, they are ANDing the words (apparently this is what vBulletin does - my apologies for the mistake there) which will fix your issue. This is documented in a thread about 10 threads down page 1 of this forum if you'd actually looked before deciding to shoot off about it, so this thread was and remains completely redundant.

[broni]

so this thread was and remains completely redundant

"In your opinion", you forgot to add.
In my opinion, it's not, so.....
There is absolutely no obligation to reply in my topic....

[Robulosity2]

So, to put the counter complaining aside..

This is being addressed in a future release.. There Your feedback was heard, and was already being actively worked on before you came here... No reason to continue complaining

[Glumbo]

Good to hear that it's being improved

[Mat Barrie]

"In your opinion", you forgot to add.

In my opinion, it's not, so.....

There is absolutely no obligation to reply in my topic....

No. I did not forget to add it, because fact and opinion are two different things. This thread says nothing more than the thread ten or so rows down the page. The difference is that the earlier thread offers constructive suggestions and is polite and well mannered. This thread offers no constructive feedback at all, and is rude and ascerbic.

Wait until 3.1. It'll either fix the problem or it wont. If it does not, then you have cause to complain - and trust me, we'll all join in. There is, however, no point complaining about it until you've seen it. You are, in fact, beating a dead horse. Then resurrecting it, and killing it again. Fun if you go for that sort of thing, but not terribly useful.

[Mark]

Big search improvements is something being talked about for a future version. But, there is a limit on how much we can do. I think we can all agree that MySQL fulltext search could be better, but... what exactly do you suggest is done?
If your suggestion is "use a better search engine" - we've already done that with Sphinx ;)

[Andy Millne]

what exactly do you suggest is done?

Knowing how it is implemented currently may help with that for example what sorting are you doing on results? perhaps some post search logic could be applied like recency of topics, rep points in posts within topic that sort of thing. To say "It's a limitation of MySQL, deal with it!" (I'm not saying IPS are btw, but some of the customers are) is far less constructive than the OP voicing the genuine problems he is experiencing, even if his phrasing is a bit terse.

So does anybody else have any further constructive views? I think the reputation system is potentially very powerful and adding weight to search results could be one implementation. So what other factors could be used to weight the results?

[Enkidu]

The search uses MySQL. If you have problems with search, go complain to the people at MySQL about it.

why should I? there are other forums' software and searching is not as terrible, horrible, and useless as here. I used to host phpBB and never had a problem with searching at all.

I'm sorry, we DO love IPB and we DO think IPS is brilliant but excuses and answers like "it's not their fault" won't get no one nowhere.

[broni]

we DO love IPB and we DO think IPS is brilliant

Agreed 100%, as I stated before, but as what to do, I have no slightest idea.
I'm not a programmer, I'm not developer...
It's up people, who know those things.
All I know, the search can work and it works on other type of boards, as I shown in my reply #13, and on IPB board it doesn't work.
Some days ago, I installed a search engine from http://www.freefind.com/ and it worked perfectly fine. Searches were perfectly accurate.
I used only free version, which limits indexing to only so many pages, but it was enough to see, how good that search service was.
Surely, you have to pay for full version.

[Ditchmonkey]

Big search improvements is something being talked about for a future version. But, there is a limit on how much we can do. I think we can all agree that MySQL fulltext search could be better, but... what exactly do you suggest is done?

If your suggestion is "use a better search engine" - we've already done that with Sphinx ;)

The most disconcerting part of this ongoing search debate is when IPS staff shows up with the "there's only so much we can do" statement. It's been discussed a million times. Simply returning results as thread by default rather than posts, and using logical and rather than or - is going to solve most of these problems. You know - like most of your competitors do in their search systems that generally work just fine.

I'd like to see IPS staff saying things like "we are working on it, and in a future version that will be released soon, you will see x, y, and z improvements". But please, knock it off with the "it's just mysql", "use sphinx", and "there's only so much we can do" nonsense.

So one more time: if your competitors can create vastly better search results USING THE SAME MYSQL DATABASE, then you should be able to do the same.

[Gabriel Petrelli]

I can confirm what broni said, search was much better in IPB 2.3.6 and I could actually find what I wanted, the search in IPB 3.0.x can't find anything and just yields highly irrelevant results.