Well, am I beating a dead horse?

[Garthilk]

Seems like perhaps if search was it's own product that was installed onto the framework and hooked into the other products perhaps it could do it's job better.

[Mat Barrie]

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.

Matt said in that other thread about 10 rows down this forum that 3.1 will AND rather than OR, like 2.3.6 did. Isn't returning results by thread an ACP option? If not, why not?

[.Ian]

A couple of thoughts on this....

1) It would be a good idea if there was a way to inform members of the best way to search - maybe a pop-up with tips - not everyone knows to use quotes or + - little point in having it in help, as people will not look there - a link on the results page would also be good.

2) fred wilma flintstones should by default show posts with only all three words in them, rather than topics with any of the words.

[broni]

IMHO...we don't want workarounds, we need a solution.

[.Ian]

Wasn't talking about a workaround

[Wolfie]

I understand the frustration and in fact share it to the point that I don't use the search option that often unless I know I can manipulate it to work in my favor.

That said, couldn't this thread get closed already? Not because it's a repeat of other threads but because it's already shown the direction it'll end up going - that of a huge heated argument where people get rude because people have different opinions on how to handle things.

[Mark]

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.

Perhaps you missed the first sentence of my post ;)

While I haven't done extensive testing myself, I have heard people say by turning off fulltext, they get better results (which is I believe how several other softwares do it by default) - of course, IPB supports this, but fulltext is better for performance.

You say my statement is "nonsense" - perhaps then, you could tell us, specifically, what should be done? "Make search better" is more complicated than it sounds. Please don't mistake us for brushing off the request - it is an important and valid point, and as I mentioned, being worked on, certainly not being brushed off - I'm just saying there's no magic line of code we can add to tell MySQL to be better at searching ;)

[broni]

Once again then.
Why the search on a sample board from my reply #13 works perfectly fine?
I don't know, I have no idea about building search engine. Just asking.

[Robulosity2]

Broni,

Your beating a dead horse.. IPB Has given a response, indicating that while there's limits to what MySQL Full Text is capable of doing within its defaults they're working on resolving result relevancy. Posting over and over "well your competitors product..." is not going to speed up 3.1.x

Comparing 2.3.6 to 3.0.x is completely silly, we ALL know 3.0.x was a complete over haul and that 2.3.6 was the EOL Version of the series, so obviously somethings will of worked better in 2.3.6 vs 3.x.. It will be fixed, but really going on an on about only shows that people have no patience

[TGSAion]

I would like to mention that people (including myself) that thought vbulletin's searching capabilities were better were more than likely using vbulletin's in-house search engine vs the mysql fulltext option that is a non-default option when installing the forum. The problem with that is on larger boards if you tried to keep using vbulletin's search the site would take a horrible performance hit. I will say though, that it is more "googleish" when it comes to returning very good results. It almost always gives what you're looking for as the first result.

After switching over to the fulltext search in vbulletin, the bad results that are commonly brought up by IP.Board users on this forum are just as horrible if you don't know how to properly format the search query. So while vbulletin does offer a good "custom" search engine, it is limited to boards with smaller post totals, and isn't of much use to bigger boards.

Some options to make the IP.board better:

• Having posts returned as a result drives me insane, I would like to make my users get posts as default results. Posts as results are too spammy when you have users quoting each other.
• Give search tips at the search box telling the users to "search for phrases" and +multiple +keywords using the appropriate markup.

edit:

another thing to mention is I believe that the custom vbulletin search has been dropped as of 4.0, and only the mysql fulltext option is available. I could be wrong on that, but last I checked this was the case.

[broni]

So, I found myself a nice solution and I'm all set for now.
I employed Yahoo search on my site:



and it finds everything CORRECTLY :whistle:

Why Yahoo, not Google?
I checked spider logs in ACP and Yahoo has 4 times more hits on my page, than Google.
I also try some random searches for some strings from my site on regular Google and Yahoo pages. Yahoo findings were for some reason much more accurate and more recent.
As for some new topics, Yahoo has only few hours delay, while Google delay is more like couple of days.

Thank you very much :P

[Glumbo]

I prefer google because I can use google adsense with the search results

[.Ian]

• Having posts returned as a result drives me insane, I would like to make my users get posts as default results. Posts as results are too spammy when you have users quoting each other.
• Give search tips at the search box telling the users to "search for phrases" and +multiple +keywords using the appropriate markup.

also hate posts being returned as posts - seems illogical.

Tips would increase the users benefit from the site

Most people would expect to search in the same way as they do on Google - not differently.

[TGSAion]

I just realized I said the opposite of what i wanted. I want threads returned as results by default, not posts.

[Gros Blaireau]

Currently, I use google search instead of IPB search, because IPB search doesn't search in IP.Content.

But I don't say it's a bad syst

[Dhillon]

another thing to mention is I believe that the custom vbulletin search has been dropped as of 4.0, and only the mysql fulltext option is available. I could be wrong on that, but last I checked this was the case.

they have dropped fulltext option and a revised custom search is the only option available.

[Gros Blaireau]

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 ;)

I'd like to have a switch : Two search engine options, default search and for exemple google site search (we put our code in a textarea). Then with a click, we switch.

[Carl M]

Can hosted ips customers have sphinx access? :)

[derpunker]

We had the same problem, standard search didnt find anything.
What helped a lot on our boards, was to disable the "Use fulltext searching?" option in the ACP.

[bfarber]

Can hosted ips customers have sphinx access? :)

If you have a dedicated or VPS, yes. Shared server, no.

We had the same problem, standard search didnt find anything.

What helped a lot on our boards, was to disable the "Use fulltext searching?" option in the ACP.

This is what mark was referring to earlier, and what our competitors usually use to produce "better" results.



To everyone else - we know you want search improvements, and it's on our todo list for 3.1. When more information is available, we will share it with you. Until then, please hang tight. There's no need for anyone to argue or get upset. State your points and move along. :)

[Misi]

So, I found myself a nice solution and I'm all set for now.

I employed Yahoo search on my site:

I prefer google because I can use google adsense with the search results

Can Yahoo or Google find words in hidden from the public sections(forums)?

[Mat Barrie]

Can Yahoo or Google find words in hidden from the public sections(forums)?

No.

[Twisted Gamer]

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: [url="

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?

Because Google has a few hundred thousand machines doing a predictive guess on what you searched for so it found relevant threads to what your searched for.

Google how ever doesn't have access to the Customer forums so it can't help you there.

Bottom line. The limitation is MySql not IPB. Learn the default operators to do a search or keep being frustrated. (Advanced Search even tells you them) They've been pretty standard for years. At least then you'll get results you can use.

Even Google supports them for Power Users. Problem now is Google has made search via their engine so easy every tom dick and harry thinks it should be that way on every site. Give every site a few billion dollars to develop and run their predictive search clusters and that might happen

(Yes I'm being sarcastic)

[Wolfie]

Can Yahoo or Google find words in hidden from the public sections(forums)?

Yes, provided that you give the search engines/spiders access to those forums, which in turn defeats the purpose of hiding them from members as they could essentially read the topics via Google.

[Matt]

Search is being dramatically overhauled. I'll be blogging about this later this week.