Search?

Am I missing something? The search function doesn't seem to have any way to look for posts or articles that contain "all" of a group of keys. It only searches on an "or" basis if you enter more than one word.

While on the subject, will enclosing a multiple word phrase in quotes search for the complete phrase?

It's a boolean search, so add a plus sign before each word that you want to require to be present in the results, and a minus sign before words you want specifically excluded.

And to search for a specific phrase, enter your query in quotes just like on Google.

Thanks, Dave. That did the trick.

Happy to help! ^_^

Adding a plus sign no longer works. I get 330 hits on "prun tomato" whether or not I use + signs. (I don't use the quotes in the search.)

LAS

We didn't keep the Boolean search logic for long; not sure why. But I will ask if we can revisit the issue :-)

Any instructions then on how to use the present system?

one-word searches are best. The advanced search can help if you remember a particular word posted by a particular member, or narrow it down to a forum (or group of forums). You can also use the date range to home in on a thread.

One word searches...that does limit the ability to search to narrow things down.

It does, but if you're trying to locate a specific thread, you can usually think of a somewhat-unique word (or even misspelled word) that you recall seeing in that thread.

I agree that allowing at least some Boolean arguments (quote marks to look for exact phrases) makes sense and is useful to the average Internet user.

Terry, I think you need to make a case with your tech folks that having such a primitive search capability on such a large website is really, really noticeable. In a bad way. Like I said, I'm driven to see what other garden web sites are doing. Now that I know that it really is as limited as it seems I've got to say I'm shocked. I'll report back here about how GardenWeb and AllThingsPlants, etc., manage this.

i just double-checked (because it's been a while since I've tried), and double quotes do work. Sorry for any confusion.

I entered a search with double quotes "pruning tomatoes" in both the DG search and the forums search. I got lots of hits which did not contain this exact combination of words. I would open the hit and then use IE to "find on this page." One search shows the results of the DG search and the other the forums search. Terry, could you give me a step by step script to show me how you executed a search that honors the double quotes?

TIA
LAS

I typed "prun tomatoes" (misspelling and all) into the search and got two results. I ran a couple other searches and used my Ctrl key + F key to find the phrase...and it worked on those, too.

If it doesn't work consistently, it is something we need to work on. What - exactly - are you searching for, and maybe we can help you find it, as well as suggest some methods for finding specific things.

Methinks "prun" was deliberate, to pick up both 'prune' and 'pruning' ;-)

I've always found the DG search works very well, much better than some other sites. If you want a bad one, try Flickr's search - it picks up all sorts of additional words / spellings which it thinks are related, leaving you to search through a whole lot of non-relevant hits. An example: I tried a search for 'dove' (as in pigeons), but it treats 'dove' and 'dive' and 'diving' all as the same word, leaving the occasional pigeon pic swamped among thousands of pictures of people swimming — totally useless! . . . and if one tries 'dove -dive' one gets zero hits!

Resin

Hmmm.... I can see how searching for "prun" might yield only those two posts where I talked about "prun tomato". But how do you explain the multiple hits I got when I put in "pruning tomato" where those two words didn't show up together? It is enough to make one dizzy, isn't it. If I were 17, back in the days when I was smart and taking my SATs, I'm sure I could have figured out the pattern here. But I'm not.... :-(

Are you looking for a specific post or thread, or just wanting to peruse threads on pruning tomatoes?

Either way, you can use the Advanced Search to focus your results. For example, you could search on only the tomatoes forum and search for the word "pruning." (or "prune").

I will discuss the double quotes/exact phrase issue with the techs tomorrow, but trust me when I say this search feature works soooo much better than what we've had in the past. It was a chronic bugaboo in our early years and at a few points, we actually used Google's and Yahoo's search engines (that was not pretty :-).

I don't really want to focus on a particular search. I'm familiar with search algorithms, and just want both boolean possibilities and to understand the double quotes. I look forward to hearing what the techs have to say.

Thanks much. I do appreciate your responsiveness.

LAS