As I wander through the various posts I find in Dollars and Sense, I see a recurring problem, one where people are looking for answers on the value of something before they scurry off to collect on a perceived good deal.
Quite often, this information exists in previous threads already, and can be found with a minor tweak or two of one's search string. For instance, I read a recent thread where someone was looking for pricing information on a Marantz 7t. This person didn't receive the information fast enough and lost out on the purchase opportunity. There is information in Dollars and Sense for Marantz 7t preamps (I believe it's a preamp, but that's irrelevant for this example) that has been posted in the past, but the method of which most people will search for it would not return the information in a short, concise list of threads. I'll use the Marantz 7t search as an example to show how searches can be made more efficient.
First off, we're going to be using the 'Search this Forum' option, which can be found to the right of the window, just above the thread listing. This is a spiffy picture as to how it appears when you click on it:
(and yes, I took a partial screenshot, as the images are too large if I use a full browser screen capture)
It's just your regular old search function, but in this case isolated to specifically this forum.
This is how I'd imagine most would go about inputting their search string in our example:
Which returns this result:
(and I _really_ had to reduce the width on my browser to get the full width needed to see the result and commentary on the search in the window under the 600 pixel limit for images here -- looks a little strange but works)
Let's take a look at what we are seeing here. First off, there were 1000 hits on our search. I would not think that there would be 1000 hits on 'marantz 7t' in Dollars and Sense! (I believe searches are limited to 1000 results)
Obviously the search function here sucks!
Uh...no, that isn't the case. It is doing exactly what it should, it's the user that isn't utilizing it properly.
The key to this poorly executed search can be found in these two lines:
Search: Keyword(s): marantz ; Forum: Dollars and Sense and child forums
The following words are either very common, too long, or too short and were not included in your search: 7t
The problem we experience with this search is the fact that the search function drops all components of a search string that are two characters long or less. What we see in the results are simply a search for 'marantz', not 'marantz 7t'. We can see the comment about '7t' being dropped from the search.
If you are having problems with search look at the 'Search: Keyword(s):' comment. This is probably the most informative component in determining if the search function is eliminating words or having problems with them.
There is a way to get precisely what you want to see. We can use quotation marks to bind the whole string together in a way that the search function will return the results we want.
Here is how that is done:
Please note all I did was add a quotation mark (") before and after the search string. Now the search function will look up 'marantz 7t' as a phrase rather than two individual words.
The results are considerably more manageable:
Again, let us look at the results of this search and determine the reason it is far more successful than the previous search. Now, instead of 1000 threads to trudge through, there is a far more manageable 10. This is the specific key to this search:
Search: Keyword(s): "marantz 7t" ; Forum: Dollars and Sense and child forums
First, instead of only searching for 'marantz' and dropping the '7t' portion of the search as was done in the previous (and relatively useless) search, the quotation marks we used told the search function this is a character string, not two separate words. It doesn't really matter what is between the quotation marks, it's all just one word to the search function.
Quotations can be used in combination, such as
"marantz 7t" "jbl l300"
which would then instruct the search function to look for two character strings. This is the comment I got in response to the above search:
Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.
If the search field was filled in without quotes:
Search: Keyword(s): marantz, jbl, l300 ; Forum: Dollars and Sense and child forums
The following words are either very common, too long, or too short and were not included in your search: 7t
Showing results 1 to 1 of 1
That thread is returned contains the keywords mentioned -- but probably won't be of value. Dunno, didn't look at it.
These concepts can be applied to just about any search engine. Quotation marks work on Google and the others I've tried. They're relatively standard conventions in the world of search engines.
These concepts can also be used in the standard search of all forums on AK, or utilized in the 'Advanced Search' feature, too.
I tried to help someone recently that contends they were getting 23 pages of matches when using 'Search this Forum' -- I got three threads. That's over 50% of the threads in D&S. Uh...I'm thinking user error on that one. Anyhow, I hope some people can find this post useful in achieving more accurate searches. The search function here at AK is considerably better than most people will claim -- but that's mainly because they're not using it correctly.
John
Quite often, this information exists in previous threads already, and can be found with a minor tweak or two of one's search string. For instance, I read a recent thread where someone was looking for pricing information on a Marantz 7t. This person didn't receive the information fast enough and lost out on the purchase opportunity. There is information in Dollars and Sense for Marantz 7t preamps (I believe it's a preamp, but that's irrelevant for this example) that has been posted in the past, but the method of which most people will search for it would not return the information in a short, concise list of threads. I'll use the Marantz 7t search as an example to show how searches can be made more efficient.
First off, we're going to be using the 'Search this Forum' option, which can be found to the right of the window, just above the thread listing. This is a spiffy picture as to how it appears when you click on it:
(and yes, I took a partial screenshot, as the images are too large if I use a full browser screen capture)
It's just your regular old search function, but in this case isolated to specifically this forum.
This is how I'd imagine most would go about inputting their search string in our example:
Which returns this result:
(and I _really_ had to reduce the width on my browser to get the full width needed to see the result and commentary on the search in the window under the 600 pixel limit for images here -- looks a little strange but works)
Let's take a look at what we are seeing here. First off, there were 1000 hits on our search. I would not think that there would be 1000 hits on 'marantz 7t' in Dollars and Sense! (I believe searches are limited to 1000 results)
Obviously the search function here sucks!
Uh...no, that isn't the case. It is doing exactly what it should, it's the user that isn't utilizing it properly.
The key to this poorly executed search can be found in these two lines:
Search: Keyword(s): marantz ; Forum: Dollars and Sense and child forums
The following words are either very common, too long, or too short and were not included in your search: 7t
The problem we experience with this search is the fact that the search function drops all components of a search string that are two characters long or less. What we see in the results are simply a search for 'marantz', not 'marantz 7t'. We can see the comment about '7t' being dropped from the search.
If you are having problems with search look at the 'Search: Keyword(s):' comment. This is probably the most informative component in determining if the search function is eliminating words or having problems with them.
There is a way to get precisely what you want to see. We can use quotation marks to bind the whole string together in a way that the search function will return the results we want.
Here is how that is done:
Please note all I did was add a quotation mark (") before and after the search string. Now the search function will look up 'marantz 7t' as a phrase rather than two individual words.
The results are considerably more manageable:
Again, let us look at the results of this search and determine the reason it is far more successful than the previous search. Now, instead of 1000 threads to trudge through, there is a far more manageable 10. This is the specific key to this search:
Search: Keyword(s): "marantz 7t" ; Forum: Dollars and Sense and child forums
First, instead of only searching for 'marantz' and dropping the '7t' portion of the search as was done in the previous (and relatively useless) search, the quotation marks we used told the search function this is a character string, not two separate words. It doesn't really matter what is between the quotation marks, it's all just one word to the search function.
Quotations can be used in combination, such as
"marantz 7t" "jbl l300"
which would then instruct the search function to look for two character strings. This is the comment I got in response to the above search:
Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms.
If the search field was filled in without quotes:
Search: Keyword(s): marantz, jbl, l300 ; Forum: Dollars and Sense and child forums
The following words are either very common, too long, or too short and were not included in your search: 7t
Showing results 1 to 1 of 1
That thread is returned contains the keywords mentioned -- but probably won't be of value. Dunno, didn't look at it.
These concepts can be applied to just about any search engine. Quotation marks work on Google and the others I've tried. They're relatively standard conventions in the world of search engines.
These concepts can also be used in the standard search of all forums on AK, or utilized in the 'Advanced Search' feature, too.
I tried to help someone recently that contends they were getting 23 pages of matches when using 'Search this Forum' -- I got three threads. That's over 50% of the threads in D&S. Uh...I'm thinking user error on that one. Anyhow, I hope some people can find this post useful in achieving more accurate searches. The search function here at AK is considerably better than most people will claim -- but that's mainly because they're not using it correctly.
John
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