Forum search

[BackPeddler]

Is it me or is the forum search tool not the greatest?

not being able to search in titles only brings up so many random results.

Ive just tried searching for something using different combinations of words and every time it brings up the same list of results.
searched, drivers door
then, abs light
got exactly the same list of results...

[Duke137]

You need to click the "search for all terms" tab mate, makes it act more like google then

[cecotto479]

Forum search facility is excellent. I found the post below by searching for "search" and specifying my username

Search function is excellent if you take care to try to limit your results.

If you know the author - specify him or her.

If you know the specific forum - specify it

Use "AND" and "*"

As an example, searching for just "testing coolant temp sensor", brings back over 11000 returns.

Searching for "testing AND coolant AND temp AND sensor" in "Technical help", specifying the author as "BrianMo*re" - I can never remember how many "o"s - returns one answer.

It really is very good if you bother to use it properly.

[polsta]

what i find wierd...is why cant you click on a username and just "show all threads satrted by this user" ...like on other forums ?

or if you put author in and username, it still brings up loads more threads

[Grrrmachine]

Learn to use "search for all" plus the wild card option. For example, if you're searching for stuff about welding (like I was), you type "weld*". This gives you all results with weld, welds, weld and welding. If you didn't use that asterix, you'd just get "weld" and you'd miss 75% of the useful results.

[polsta]

its not the search for all that people find tricky- its the more specific searching , ie tring to fiter out all the random results that come up that your not searching for, and threads for example with just toe exact words you search for in the title etc

[deanocool]

i think its great when you compare it to something like rat look.coms search engine. it cant find any posts related to 'e30 bmw' yet theres about 10 posts in the 1st 3 pages with it in the title

[Morat]

PEBKAC

[BackPeddler]

thats a negative

[nickso]

Ironically searching for M3 gets you sod all posts. It's not perfect but usable.

[Morat]

Just for fun try the following search term:
forum and search
Tick "posts" and leave the rest alone.

[kman82]

Is using AND the same as ticking search for all terms?

[cecotto479]

No. Using "AND" will return only posts with both terms searched for. Try my example above to see it in operation.

"OR" is pretty much "search all terms".