Search for "GPS" turns up Zero posts, why?

[creakndale]

When I attempt to search for the keyword "GPS" (without quotes) the search engine can't find anything. Yet as I've been browsing around I've seen the term GPS in some Titles and Message bodies,. I must be doing something wrong but can't figure out what. Anybody able to shed some light on my search predicament?

creakndale

 

[Pommie]

The stupid search engine won't allow any words of less than 4 letters. It is so annoying at times.

Use google and type gps site:https://www.electro-tech-online.com in the search box.

Mike.

 

[creakndale]

Thanks Pommie!!

 

[Torben]

Just to be fair to vBulletin, it's likely not a restriction enforced by vBulletin itself. Rather, it's the default setup of the underlying MySQL fulltext indexing. If the site admin has access to the MySQL setup it is fully possible to set the indexing to allow three-character search terms.

There are also a few other default rules on the fulltext indexes which can catch users by surprise (large stopword set, 50% relevance cutoff, etc) and the whole thing can be made much more pleasurable to use by doing a bit of judicious database server tweaking--although to make it really useful you also need to change the code which actually performs the search queries.

But yeah, in the end it boils down to what Pommie said.


Torben

 

[DirtyLude]

You don't need access to MySQL to set the search index to 3 characters. You just need to set it in the vBulletin control panel and rebuild the indexes. Downside is the index size is much larger and search functions take more resources since the search index is larger. I run a vBulletin instance and ended up lowering it to 3, because of pressure from the users.

 

[Torben]

You don't need access to MySQL to set the search index to 3 characters. You just need to set it in the vBulletin control panel and rebuild the indexes. Downside is the index size is much larger and search functions take more resources since the search index is larger. I run a vBulletin instance and ended up lowering it to 3, because of pressure from the users.

Good one on the vBulletin setting--I wasn't aware of that. I don't admin a forum site and to be honest if I did I probably wouldn't use vBulletin even though it seems quite nice; I'd more likely go with an OSS package.

My thought on the index size is that it's pretty much the admin's call, but if you're going to provide a tool it should be useful to users. A fulltext search which doesn't index 3-char words isn't nearly as useful as it could be, and these days disc space is cheaper than pissing off your users. But again, admin's call.


Regards,

Torben