Experimental search engine

Something to play with:

http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/commentsearch.php?q=highways

I typed in Asters and got many types of asters but also other plants like mile-a-minute-weed and stonecrop.

It is searching the comments in PlantFiles, nothing else. It's a text search engine that may one day be used for the forum search engine.

Try searching for things like:

flood
pond
prairie
fire
rust
cows
ouch

and so forth

Hmm, typed in 'Miniature Rose', the first two selections were Scotch Moss and Corsican Mint and then also a Florist Kalanchoe, the rest (a very short list) were mini roses, well except the last one was a Floribunda Rose, no mention of miniature in that one that I could see. Not sure why those first two even came up.

Ahh, well the Comments search makes sense I guess now, you added that as I was typing.

I tried it. Works great.

This only allows me to search the plant files. I need to search the forums for the type of information I need.

This is a beta-test of a new search, using a different part of the site for the testing phase ;o)

Works great. Hopefully dave can expand on this beta version without much trouble.

I am always looking for veggies that perform well, so I searched the phrase "high yield".
The results that came back were good!
The description of each plant was relevant to what I was looking for specifically.

I had an interesting result when I typed in North American native plants. It did link to NA natives but also threw in plants considered invasive. I can understand why in some cases because the comments might have mentioned it wasn't native so it could be caught by that comment. But if you didn't read carefully you might pick a noted invasive thinking it was native when comments were positive.
Maybe the search engine is not narrow enough?

If you put double quotes around a search, it'll pick up just that phrase. Otherwise, it'll only pick up entries where that word occurs.

But either way, a key word search can't pick up on context, so if an invasive plant has a comment along the lines of
"Instead of this thug, plant [xyz], because it's a North American native alternative" it's going to be included in your results.

Yes, I see why it happened. It is interesting how concepts are linked, people that are interested in native plants tend to comment on invasives and might add the remark not native, crowding out natives or use this native instead. Makes you rethink how to phrase comments.

Hopefully it won't stifle people's comments--it shouldn't.

Keep in mind this experimental search is only to "test drive" a new search engine, using a relatively small amount of data (the PF comments contain much less text than all the forum posts.)

Whether this will become a permanent fixture in PlantFiles is uncertain.

Well, it is fast and the results were mostly on target. I hope this proves to be the search solution we need.

It works just great. I typed in flood and got a bunch of hits. Then I tried opening up a couple of these hits and typed flood in my browser's find feature. Sure enough, the word flood was in a lot of the comments. I didn't get results that good from the old forum search.

Way to go, Dave!!

Karen

One reason I joined this garden site was the ability to search the forums for subjects I am interested in. For example I am interested in aeroponics and I was able to find several mentions of people trying it. Without that capability, the usefulness to me is very limited. Is there a plan to have a search feature for the forums?

Here's what we know: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=5850934

And until the search here is back up and running, you can always use Google, go to the advanced search and it'll let you search just within the davesgarden.com site.

I have enabled the search engine again for now while I continue developing the new version. If it slows things down for everyone, though, I'll have to pull it down. Hopefully it'll be alright for the next few weeks.

Thanks, Dave!

I just tryed it, typed in 'shady zone 8' and I got a list of 5. I like it. I know they are more that, but to just think about how easy this would be to find a plant you like to have but you never knew is name.

Great idea Dave.

tillysrat, remember--that search is looking only at the comments, not at the plant's specific details. An advanced search for all plants hardy to zone 8a, requiring at least light shade can be found here: http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/advanced.php?nn%5B16%5D=0&nn%5B1%5D=0&nn%5B2%5D=0&nn%5B3%5D=14&nn%5B4%5D=3&nn%5B5%5D=0&nn%5B6%5D=0&nn%5B7%5D=0&nn%5B8%5D=0&nn%5B9%5D=0&nn%5B23%5D=0&nn%5B59%5D=0&nn%5B10%5D=0&nn%5B12%5D=0&sname=Plants&Search=Search

You can adjust and/or further narrow down this search by selecting additional criteria (height, bloom color, etc.): http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/advanced.php?sname=Plants

Terry wrote:
[quote]If you put double quotes around a search, it'll pick up just that phrase. [quote]

But when I used "California native" the results included anything with California or native in the comments, not the phrase. Did I miss something?

It *should* be using boolean logic to pick up only exact phrases when you encase them in double quotes. (And it was working that way before ;o)

Thanks, Terry. I did not know about this advance search, must of missed it.

You're very welcome ;o)