Searching using quotation marks

When I search using quotation marks (""), I only get results that actually have quotation marks in their posts.

Let me give an example: when I enter: “Global Village”, (wanting to get results with that exact phrase) I only get 2 search matches and both of them actually have quotation marks in their posts (e.g. ‘Anything with “Global Village” in it is funny.’). But when I enter: Global Village, I get 221 search matches (e.g. ‘I truly hope Chen’s Japanese interpreter gets bootfucked back to Global Village (where he taught Japanese in the late 1990s).’ & ‘wolrd’s biggest village.’/’ open-minded and global minded ').

I hope this makes sense and that you can improve this searching method as it is very useful.

In other words you’d like it to work like Google.

Yeah, me too. That sure would narrow down the search results.

But just as importantly, we need to get the whole search database uploaded. Last I heard it was only partly up, which is part of the reason search results are sometimes unsatisfactory.

you can use google to search Forumosa, for example use this:

"global village" site:forumosa.com

Agree with the suggestion.

In the meantime try “Global AND Village” (without the quotation marks) - doesn’t give you the result for the exact phrase only but at least only those where both words are found, 148 currently.

[quote=“Big Fluffy Matthew”]you can use google to search Forumosa, for example use this:

"global village" site:forumosa.com

Interesting, thanks! Is there code for conjoining two quoted sections, like:

"ghost thread" AND "Dragonbones" site:forumosa.com ?

The AND is implied so you would just do this:

[quote]“ghost thread” Dragonbones site:forumosa.com[/quote]The quotes aren’t needed around “Dragonbones” because it’s already one word. If you wanted an OR search you’ll need to put OR in it.

Next to the text box in google there’s an “advanced search” link, that takes you to a page where you can do fancy searches

[quote=“Big Fluffy Matthew”]The AND is implied so you would just do this:

[quote]“ghost thread” Dragonbones site:forumosa.com[/quote]The quotes aren’t needed around “Dragonbones” because it’s already one word. If you wanted an OR search you’ll need to put OR in it.

Next to the text box in google there’s an “advanced search” link, that takes you to a page where you can do fancy searches[/quote]

But when I tried adding a word to a quoted strip, like

"ghost thread" Dragonbones 

it doesn’t work.

The Advanced Search page will build

Dragonbones "ghost thread"

for me if I enter

Dragonbones

on the first line and

ghost thread

on the second, but this search fails just as if I’d entered

"ghost thread" Dragonbones 

myself to begin with.

"ghost thread" Dragonbones

and

Dragonbones "ghost thread"have exactly the same effect, a page containing both “ghost thread” and “dragonbones”. It didn’t find any for me, it seems there are no such pages.

Oh, wait, it does work. Silly me. I have to make sure such a page exists first. :laughing:

Thanks for the tips!

my brain hurts now.

On a side note, when I search the site and select “topic” (as opposed to “posts”), I often see that the search matches do not have the word(s) I searched for in their topic.

I click Chops and it doesn’t chop anybody.

[quote=“Modest Mouse”]On a side note, when I search the site and select “topic” (as opposed to “posts”), I often see that the search matches do not have the word(s) I searched for in their topic.[/quote]One of the posts in the topic should contain the word. It returns a list of topics rather than a list of posts.

And that post, which contains the word, could be on any page, not necessarily the page which it opened to. Which is of course ridiculous. The software should direct you to the first page on the thread which contains the word. In an ideal world that is.

Oh, Ok. I thought that selecting “topic” would result in topics that have the word(s) I entered in the search box.

Thanks for the clarification.

If you want to search the for something in a topic title there is a “Search message title only” option.

Yeah, why can’t you be more like Google. Is that too much to ask for?

This brings me to my next suggestion: have a smiley face for expressing sarcasm, as it is often difficult to detect on forums - which can lead to misunderstandings. I’m not sure what it would look like. I’ll leave it up to you to decide that, after all that is why they pay you the big bucks (insert sarcastic smiley face here).