How does one search the forum?

[firstascent2002]

I read a post a while ago about the best ways to search the forum. I find that I can only search posts up to one year old. I know there is a way to get google to do it. Any hints?

J

 

[pvb]

Using Google...

Yes, Google does a good job of searching the forums. You simply type site:www.ybw.com/forums into the Google box, followed by the search word(s).

 

[DeeGee]

Or you just look up the top and you will see "Main Index | Search | etc... /forums/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

 

[VicS]

The internal Search facility will search back beyond 1 year but it will only do a year at a time so if you put in "older than 1 Year" it will find results between 1 and 2 years old.

I cant make PVB's suggestion work. In Google I use YBW + keyword

 

[pvb]

Googling...

[ QUOTE ]
I cant make PVB's suggestion work.

[/ QUOTE ]
You're not putting any spaces in the site:www.ybw.com/forums bit, are you? That would stop it working properly. There should be a space after forums, before the first search word. It's a standard Google method of searching only within a particular website.

 

[BrendanS]

copy and paste the entire line below into the google search box to see how it should work

site:www.ybw.com/forums oxalic acid

 

[VicS]

[ QUOTE ]
site:www.ybw.com/forums oxalic acid

[/ QUOTE ] That worked but it only came up with 6 results. Oxalic acid has been mentioned on the forums countless times so why does it only find 6 of them.

I actually searched for muriatic acid, which is mentioned nearly every time blocked toilet hoses are mentioned including one current thread. I got no matches at all!

I faired a lot better with the internal search getting several matches for each of the years I searched.

 

[BrendanS]

google will only bring up more recent mentions.

If you want to go back through the history of the forum you'll need to do it year by year on internal search engine

 

[Vara]

FWIW I have the google tool bar which has a search this site button.
On "Oxalic Acid" it returned 209 hits.(which probably still understates the number of posts on the subject!).

 

[Rustyknight]

Try the following

site:www.ybw.com forums muriatic acid

It works better without the / between ybw.com and forums

 

[VicS]

Better but still along way short of expectations.

 

[Rustyknight]

Have to agree.... the google search showed up 4 hits, yet using the forum search with just the word muriatic, and "older than 1 month" gave 17 posts. /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[BrendanS]

I've put in a error report to google to ask them to investigate why search from toolbar gives so many more results than normal search box

 

[alb40]

Ive always used the google method. Everytime i serch within the forum, its says something like 'another search cannot be performed at this time' or something similar.

Any ideas what im doig wrong?

 

[BrendanS]

once you've done a search, there is a time limit that stops you doing any more searches immediately to stop overloading the server as they are very intensive and can slow the server down for the rest of users if too many of them. Just wait a little while and try again

 

[Rustyknight]

or alternatively, "right click" on search to open it in a new tab/window, do the search, and if nothing shows up, close the tab/window and then "right click" again......

 

[pvb]

Without the slash...

[ QUOTE ]
It works better without the / between ybw.com and forums

[/ QUOTE ] Strangely, it does return many more results, yet they're still mostly results with URLs starting "www.ybw.com/forums/....". Don't understand why Google is working that way.

When I first started using Google (because the standard forum search was so incredibly slow), I just used site:www.ybw.com but found that I got a lot of non-forum results, hence I started putting site:www.ybw.com/forums to be more specific.

 

[DeeGee]

Re: Using Google...

I have never tried searching ybw thru google. Obvious when you mention it /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

 

[alb40]

It always says it even on the first attempt! /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif

 

[BrendanS]

Do you use Active Topics?