A few people have commented about the search system on Freel2.

If you do have a problem and feel that the search is not returning what you want, please get in touch with me. What I'd need is examples of what you searched for and what youwere expecting to receive. That way I can repeat the search and see what's returned.

People have also commented that Google is a better search than the site search. Last time I checked, Google were a multi-billion dollar company with effectively limitless resources to develop search technologies.... and I'm not!

So when someone searches for cold start using the forum search, it'll find all threads with cold and start in them. Google might be cleverer at ranking items according to relevance, which is an enormously complex feature for me to implement.

Please accept there will always be limitations due to budget, I will do all I can to tweak things but I do need some data/information to work from

Martin, It wasn't meant as criticism, just that via google it seems to find what you need

I don't seem to have a issue with it  Former Mod/Member, with the most post & Chicken George Arch nemesis

I think it is far better than the previous incarnation, it just needs a little thought into what you search for.

As an example, you need to be fairly specific in your request ie;

pads = 217 "threads" or over 500 if you select posts
rear brake pads = 91 threads
replacing rear brake pads = 4 threads

also, you need to spell correctly or the search engine will only find the incorrect ones.

"replacing rear break pads" = 0 threads but search for "break pads" gets you 16 threads.

Incidentally, searching " Freel 2 replacing rear pads" on google gets you one thread which is not the most relevent one.

I'm not taking things personally, I welcome constructive criticism as it helps improve things, but there are certain things I need to know rather than just saying "Google found it"

I found this very post via google

taztastic wrote:

also, you need to spell correctly or the search engine will only find the incorrect ones.

This is important, many have retaliated saying "the spell police" are at it again and get all in a huff when corrected, but if someone doesn't make the effort to spell check then what hope is there for the search engine. There's no excuse with the integrated spellchecker you can use in your browser.

Someone who has posted a very useful thread/post on a subject will have it disappear into the bottomless pit if they spelt it like so ** break pad renewel **

My spelling is better than my grammar but I still run it through a spell checker before submitting the post and I think everyone should do the same, even if its just for others retrieving a search item.

BTW, I find the 'Search' a lot better than it was and just by playing around a little with the search terms and wording usually gets what I want albeit with a couple of pages, but so what.
People expect a return of one thread with exactly what they were looking for after inputting a fuzzy search term