New Site Search Engine

[Michael]

After getting bugged about the website's inadequate search system for a while, I finally decided to do something about it.

It isn't linked up live on the site, but you guys can check it out if you like:

http://www.mobileburn.com/search3.jsp

As of the time I am writing this, it is stable for the most part, but things could change as I work on it. If you get an error message on everything you try, then I am doing something to it.

If most things work, but a particular phrase or two makes it crash, let me know, please.

[manav]

I'll mess around with it and let you know if I come up with some bugs.

[Michael]

Good, because nobody else has really looked at it.

I'm not sure it is good enough in its current form. I can't quite say that I understand how it works. Maybe I implemented it incorrectly. Sometimes it seems to miss obvious things, or rank them too low.

[manav]

Michal, it seems to give too many results. And some times it misses out some important ones. Can we use operators like + and - which we do in google? And have you *taught* it to ignore common terms like AND IF OR THE etc...

[Michael]

It makes use of +/- AND/OR/NOT just like google.

It says so on the search page.

This new search works differently than the old one. Much differently. For one, the story content and title are both searched now. Secondly, all words entered into the search form are assumed to be optional. The more words that match, the higher the story ranks in the results. This means that "Motorola Bluetooth" is understood by the search engine to mean:
"Motorola OR Bluetooth"

You can get around that behavior, though. If you wanted to be sure that the term Motorola always matched, but Bluetooth was optional, you could do something like this:
"+Motorola Bluetooth"

If you wanted to be sure that all of the terms were found, try:
"Motorola AND Bluetooth"

You can use any combination or AND/OR and the + sign, too, to make complex expressions:
"(Motorola OR Nokia) AND (Bluetooth OR Camera)"And yes, it ignores small meaningless words (as long as they are not inside quotes).

[manav]

Umm. I tried searching on it a couple of times using general terms. It seems fine to me. But will do more "unglee" with it. (Unglee means to tinker or test in hindi. Unglee actually means finger. And you can define it as to finger.. Ahh guess I am going too far here. But you get the picture)

[Toocool]

Why do you use hindi out here?

[Toocool]

you are seriously crazy!!

[mundets]

He was using it as an expression...

[manav]

TooCool please dont try to double post, its not that I am worried about the numbers increasing or anything. Michael is already angry on you as I've seen you revived some old thread. Try to stick to the topic at hand and not use small words in a thread. Even I have got a warning from sid and will now try to keep all conversations in PM. So please mind it. Because I like you, you are a interesting guy and would not like you banned or something.