Searches are so confusing as to be useless

I put "dianthus fire storm" into the Forums search and got the three hits shown in the attached Word doc, none of which, as far as I can see, have that phrase.

I put the same phrase in the Dave's Garden search and got a bunch in "market place," none of which had that phrase. If it was ignoring quotes, surely I should have gotten hits in articles, etc., on one of the words.

What's going on?

This isn't the first time I've posted a question about searches. I've pretty much given up on Dave's Garden searches and go straight to Google instead.

Anyway, can someone explain what is shown in the screen capture in the attached doc?

Oh, well, I can't attach a document and I don't know how to make a jpg, gif or npg out of my screen capture.... Would someone else put "dianthus fire storm" in quotes into the forums search and see if they get three hits? One from "Seed Trading," one from "African violets and...." and one from "Books Movies and TV"?

Thanks again
las

Thanks,
LAS

I didn't take the time to do the sitewide search, but I did the forum search and got the same three hits. If you look through them, you would find that they all have the word Dianthus, the word fire, and the word storm in them. I tried using Google to search for that phrase here and it didn't come up with anything either, so I think in this case the search engine succeeded in finding the closest matches, but the exact phrase you're looking for doesn't occur anywhere in the forums.

I don't think DG is a true boolean searching engine. I've been frustrated too. But on the other hand, I *have* received some good results when what I was looking for could be capsulated into one word.

Try using quotes in your Google search and see if that helps. Sometimes you just have to play around a bit with various options that are available Internet-wide.

Good luck and I hope I was at least some help.

I tried it and wouldn't you know it, this thread popped up first on the list.

I used the advanced search this afternoon and it found exactly what I was looking for.

I think one of the main problems is that Dave's Garden searches don't respect quotation marks. Or, at least, the Forum Searches don't. Another problem is that the Dave's Garden and Forum Searches aren't clearly distinguished.

I just love the relatively new search engine. I used to have to use Google to search DG. Now I use the Advanced Search on DG all the time and always I do believe find what I am looking for.

I usually search within just 1 forum so you can do that LAS14 by just clicking on the forum you want it to search. It is so fast. A bit slower but still almost immediate, at times I have searched all of DG by not clicking on any forum on the Advanced Search page.

This message was edited Sep 25, 2010 7:51 PM