Staff: Large search quality/accuracy issues

Hello all. I’ve been meaning to write this post for awhile, as it’s been something that seems to be getting worse and worse as time goes on: There is something not right regarding the accuracy and/or logic of the forum search as well as quotation searching being broken; making it harder and harder to be able to properly find if something actually exists on the board.

Clarification/Example: Say I want to search for the CD series called Sci-Fi’s Greatest Hits. On any other board I go to, I would simply go to the search bar, and put the name in between quotes ("Sci-Fi’s Greatest Hits"), which tells the board I want to find anything with that SPECIFIC full text phrase. Unfortunately ffshrine search doesn’t like that. No matter what you put, it will come back with an error saying ‘The following words are either very common, too long, or too short and were not included in your search:’, and then list your entire search phrase. It doesn’t matter what words you might try: "Mighty Science Theater" for example, same result.

The requirement of quotes wouldn’t be an issue necessarily if the search looked for the word phrase combination first and was a higher priority than just single parts of the total phrase, and sorted the results as such via relevancy. But instead the results will be just a random sorting, with one word matches being higher in the list than multiple word or concurrent word matches. Note: there is an �Exact name� checkbox when doing username searches, but sadly no �Exact phrase� option for keywords.

The only options you are left to refine with are �Search Entire Posts� or �Search Titles Only�. This is nowhere ideal for either choice: �Entire Posts� makes sure you�re searching the entirety of the post but you�re left with the �needle in a haystack� results I mentioned above; �Titles Only� while potentially being much more accurate, has the severe disadvantage of bypassing the entire body of the post. As we know, there are often all sorts of �megathreads� that are of a certain genre, topic, etc that run for multiple pages and could contain what you�re looking for and a download link, but all that specific search would see is the original topic�s title of �ANIME ULTRA POST�, and immediately exclude it.

So, what can be done? Well hopefully, I think there just needs to be some tinkering or setting adjustments on the backend/admin panel that will add additional visible options and/or correct the exclusion of the quotation usage searching, or disable the �very common, too long, or too short and were not included in your search� warning. I say that because, like I said before, this is the only board I go to and have used where I�ve seen this issue, and I know those other boards are vBulletin, so that�s why I�m hoping it�s just an isolated incident here.

Sorry this was such a long read, but I wanted to make sure I was able to explain everything properly, and not just come off as someone bitching for no reason :-). It�s been something that I think has been gimping this otherwise amazing board more and more as time goes on where people can�t trust the accuracy of the search results or be able to reach the information/links they are searching for when they actually do exist, as there is an amazing collection of stuff here.

Please let me know if I can provide any further clarification or be able to help test in any way while working on a fix! Thanks all!

The built-in search function of the board has never worked correctly (for what I can remember, at least), we tend to suggest users to use external websites (example: Google).

Just perform a site search using your favourite search engine, i.e.:

site:forums.ffshrine.org

It works perfectly.