Search Function ????

[Bill Hudson]

Folks,

I've tried the search function several times tonight and each time I get zero results. Even tried 'oil' and got no results. What's up?

Bill

[Barnyard]

Bill, it doesn't work for me either when I type in "oil" but it went nuts when I tried "Barnyard". I got back 2974 results. I tried several words and it worked for me. The search doesn't always work with common words. Oil might be one of them

[indy61]

I think you have to use more than 3 letters, not sure why.

[Barnyard]

I think you have to use more than 3 letters, not sure why.

Yep, that is true also.

[John *.?-!.* cub owner]

Someplace (not sure where) there are instructions and if I remember correctly it, as well as most search engines, will not work with 3 letters or less. There are normally so many results for that number of letters to make the search useless.

[Jim Becker]

Yeah, minimum length words are required. I think it may be configurable in the software but 4 is common. You can wildcard your searches. So even though "oil" isn't acceptable, you can use "oil*". That will not find "oil" but it will find "oils", "oily", "oilcan" and the like. By the way "oil*" returns 1090 results. So imagine what "oil" would return.

[Bill Hudson]

Hmmmmm. Three letters don't work. That explains a lot. I was using a string of three words with three letters each. I guess that explains why I don't buy lottery tickets. I tried 'oil' because I just "knew" that had to work with all the threads discussing kinds/types of oil.

Thanks guys for all your help.

Bill

[Rudi]

The search function will automatically void certain words.. such as Cub, Oil, Gas as well as other 3 letter words. The reason for Cub and Oil or Gas is because there are just so many results that it is a useless search.. so the default goes to 0. At least that is what I have kind of figured out over the years. By placing the + sign in front of the word Cub still returns 0 results because of the sheer volume that it would generate. By adding the * wild card .. well returns Search found 37582 matches: +Cub*, so you can see what is meant by useless search results.

Of course I am just surmising as I think Dennis is really the only one who can tell what the search paramaters are limited to as he is the Admin and that is an Admin function.

[Dennis]

A recent change of the search method requires four characters now, instead of the previous three.

Please try the Google search on the main page sometime and let me know if you like the results better than the forums built-in search. I may change it in the forum sometime if the feedback is positive.

Thanks,
Dennis