Thread: Google Search

You may have noticed that we have temporarily replaced the standard forum search:




with Google Search:





The regular forum search can still be used through the 'Advanced Search'.

Please give it a try and let us know what you think.

I am thinking of doing it differently, but I wanted to test this one first, since it's easier to set up.


The advantage of Google Search is that it uses intelligence (based on your previous google searches all over the internet, as well as other people's searches on SRP) to rank the site content that matches the search terms.
The standard forum search just does the match and orders the results chronologically.

Hey Gugi is this new search the same as the add-on you made before for firefox. I have and like that add on a lot. Something you might consider is a drop down box to switch between the regular search and the google search

Actually Ben did the add-on, but this one should be functionally the same, may be a little bit better.
But yeah, the idea is to have it integrated in the website itself and accessible from any browser instead of having people use a plugin.

Finally yes, I'd like to have it as an option, but this is just the first test-run iteration. It took quite a bit of cajoling it to make it do what I wanted it to do, so all those other things would be incremental improvements depending on the feedback we get and the availability of the devs.

Ahh sounds good.

I just tried doing some searches with this and the all gave me this screen :

hmm, what was the search term? i ran few like wade and butcher, honing, stropping, etc. and they seemed to work.
I also set autocompletion (should need few hours before it starts working), and changed the character set, so it may be due to that or you could've just caught it in the middle me making changes.

For now I can't get rid of the ads in the search results and one column to the right seems like most unobtrusive, but eventually we should be able to either remove them or have only shaving advertisements (and until then srp may be making few cents here and there off them).

Worked great for me, I think better than the old search. Thanks for doing this.

Search worked fine for me, I did several just to test. I have noticed that SRP is very favorably placed in google search on many occasions, I have used both our own search and google a lot, with success even. I am inherently sceptical, but as long as we have other searches in addition to other search options, I am perfectly happy.
Nice job implementing, looks great.

hmm ok figured it out an add on I have on firefox was interfering. For those that use adban on firefox it will see the google search box as an ad

And with that off the search work great. You do nice work.

SEARCH TIP:

If you want the results sorted by date (or at least reasonably close to it), in the searchbar put the following code at the beginning of the search:

Code:

more:recent4

For instance, searching

Code:

HNSB

will return results by relevancy... My profile will be the first thing that comes up, as that is the most relevant result for HNSB.

But, if I wanted to view threads that contained the term "HNSB" in order from the most recent time someone posted my name, I would use:

Code:

more:recent4 HNSB

That will return results (somewhat) in order, starting with the most recent instance of "HNSB".



(note: This doesn't get them perfectly in order, but it forces more recent results closer to the top of the list)

(note2: the development team is looking at a cleaner way to do this, but for now it will help to sort your searches while we test this out)

I like the new Google search thingy. It seems to just be more precise or maybe more literal. I don't know if that's so but that's the illusion I get