| axabrax | 20 Sep 2014 7:27 a.m. PST |
I go to the TMP message boards link on my iPad. In the search field, I type in "Retreat from Moscow" with titles selected. The search result comes back "nothing found." I go to Google, and type in "Perry retreat from Moscow." I get back several pages of results, all of them titles from TMP. WTF? Is this a bug, or is TMP's search engine just that broken? |
 x42brown  | 20 Sep 2014 7:42 a.m. PST |
I have always used Google when searching TMP I have never found TMP's own search good enough. I typically do a Google advance search with TMP or parts of it as the required domain. This gets me better results. x42 |
 Doms Decals  | 20 Sep 2014 7:48 a.m. PST |
No idea what the cause is – "retreat from Moscow" with title checked got me a whole bunch of results. That said, a Google search with the string "site:theminiaturespage.com" added is always a good way to search – Google are one of the biggest companies in the world, on the basis of how well they do search, so…. ;-) |
| John the OFM | 20 Sep 2014 7:59 a.m. PST |
Dear Editor in Chief is a one man band coding TMP.
Google is a gazillion dollar corporation. |
| jeffreyw3 | 20 Sep 2014 8:01 a.m. PST |
I usually use TMP Search for authors and words in titles, both of which seem to work well. For searching the contents, yeah, Google is quickerer and betterer. |
| Dynaman8789 | 20 Sep 2014 9:52 a.m. PST |
Isn't it possible to have TMP's search actually use google? I thought other sites were doing that. |
 Editor in Chief Bill   | 20 Sep 2014 10:04 a.m. PST |
WTF? Is this a bug, or is TMP's search engine just that broken? In the first case, you did a search of titles. In the second case, you did a search of all content on TMP.  That said, a Google search with the string "site:theminiaturespage.com" added is always a good way to search And to be specific to the main forum, use "site:theminiaturespage.com/boards/" |
| axabrax | 21 Sep 2014 8:30 a.m. PST |
Still, Bill, most of the results on Google were titles from the boards. The fact that my TMP result was "nothing found" when there are clearly multiple boards titles with that string is badly broken. It's not an issue of time or resources for a one man band, it's a serious bug if the search engine can't find anything at all for multiple exact matches. |
| Doms Decals | 22 Sep 2014 2:18 a.m. PST |
Yet replicating your search yields plenty of results, which would suggest either a connection hiccup or a typo on your part, not a serious failing of the search function. |
| Martin Rapier | 22 Sep 2014 3:00 a.m. PST |
"Isn't it possible to have TMP's search actually use google? I thought other sites were doing that." That is certainly feasible, it is what we do for our main website. The relevant google appliances to do it are not inexpensive, but are very tuneable and useful for pulling in search results from multiple sources etc. I wouldn't have thought that sort of capability would be cost effective for TMP, esp as it needs a certain amount of development and admin effort to make best use of it. |
