effective search terms for UKY forum

I do not want to be one of those people who posts questions in a forum that have already be answered. I actually enjoy researching and reading the excellent content here. However, I have not had great success searching these boards and I am asking for help.

I read Mindy's post, about noticing which board you are searching. Nevertheless, when I search for "ILE" (Indefinite leave to Enter) at the top of the file structure, I get an annoying array of useless hits, mostly for the word "while", and miss, for example, the excellent threads like "settlement right away" where the term ILE was used frequently and appropriately.

Can someone tell me, and newcomers like myself, how to get the best results from the search engine? There is a lot of great information here, but I only get the good stuff when someone pastes in a direct link.

Thanks and keep that good information coming!

Martin

try using  "ILR" with the quotation marks. its the same really

I have to say that I tend to get pants results from the search engine too...

Vicky

I have to say that I tend to get pants results from the search engine too...

Me too. It seems to pick and choose at random the results it wants to give me.

I have to say that I tend to get pants results from the search engine too...

Vicky

Me too. It seems to pick and choose at random the results it wants to give me.

Thirded.  I only ever seem to get results from 2005 and earlier, too, which is annoying when I KNOW something has been posted recently, but just long enough ago to be buried somewhere on the twentieth page of a sub-forum.  Ah, well!

Thirded.  I only ever seem to get results from 2005 and earlier, too, which is annoying when I KNOW something has been posted recently, but just long enough ago to be buried somewhere on the twentieth page of a sub-forum.  Ah, well!

Exactly. But I also find that it doesn't find pretty old posts. There seems to be a very small window of time that it works for! Sometimes I can manage to find what I'm looking for by slogging through page after page of posts (so I know it's there), but it still doesn't show up using search.

yep, the forum search engine is pretty crap, IMO.  I tend to get better results with google, actually. Go to the google home page and type in your query followed by site:talk.uk-yankee.com...like so:

Code: [Select]

ILE site:talk.uk-yankee.com  That should generate more useful results.

edited to add: the google search isn't a cure-all by any means, but I've found it tends to produce more recent/relevant threads than the forum search does.

Thanks everyone -- glad to hear that it's not just me! And thanks, springhaze for the google tip. Hopefully now I can spare everyone my questions which have surely been asked before.

Is there anyone who can fix or look into the local search engine problem?

Thank goodness I'm not the only one who hasn't had much luck using the UKY search engine!

yep, the forum search engine is pretty crap, IMO.  I tend to get better results with google, actually. Go to the google home page and type in your query followed by site:talk.uk-yankee.com...like so:

Excellent tip, Andrea! I'll definitely be using it! 

I think Leah is aware of the problem. She'll see this thread and hopefully let us know if there are any tips and tricks!

Thirded.  I only ever seem to get results from 2005 and earlier, too, which is annoying when I KNOW something has been posted recently, but just long enough ago to be buried somewhere on the twentieth page of a sub-forum.  Ah, well!

Same here.  I tried to do a search for something yesterday and the topics that came up were for 4-5 years ago, and not very relevant. 

I'll try the Google search!

I wasn't completely aware that the problem wasn't solved before. Thank you for flagging it, I'll see what I can do.

Go to the google home page and type in your query followed by site:talk.uk-yankee.com...like so:

Code: [Select]

ILE site:talk.uk-yankee.com  That should generate more useful results.

I just did a search on UKY for "answer phone", looking for a fairly recent 2007 thread.  I got some quite old, imperfect matches, and not what I wanted.

I did a Google search in the way suggested here and my thread was the first match.

Thanks so much for the suggestion Springhaze!