Forum Searches

BIZILL

is it only club polk or do most forums have not so helpful search engines? i've spent so much time in the past running searches for things such as "sda-srs" and more recently "lsi 9" or "lsi 9's" and that's obviously too short a search for the system to handle. the search feature becomes useless.

thank goodness i'm not a newb here or i'd get chastised for not using the search feature when i go in search of certain topics from time to time.

is there a better way to search that i am unaware of?

nooshinjohn

if you would use the search function, you would find this topic has beed discussed several times in the past...:D:p


John

BIZILL

i will slap you till my hand turns red, good and swollen!:D

mmadden28

Anything under 4 characters and any symbols will be ignored by the vBulletin search engine. Its likely configurable, but that is the way it is right now on this forum.

Your best bet is to use Google or Bing, etc., and limit the search to the polk site, for example (I think the search term parameters are probably universal):
in the google search bar type:
site:www.polkaudio.com sds-srs
or
sda-srs site:www.polkaudio.com

If the results contain too many undesired results, start omitting terms by preceding the unwanted serach term with a "-" such as if too many hits came back related to craigslist or ebay ads that are likely expired:
site:www.polkaudio.com sds-srs -craigslist -ebay
and/or if you wanted to further narrow it down to include any crossover discussions, preceded all the desired search term with a "+" such as"
site:www.polkaudio.com +sds-srs +crossover -craigslist -ebay

Basically the 'site:' limits the search to anything indexed at the url after the 'site:', the '-' omits the search term, and a '+' ensures the search term is included on the same page as any other '+' search terms (and not just or).

You could also use the search engine's advanced GUI, but sometimes its just easier to get familiar with the quick tricks.

You just have to keep in mind the obvious which is in the examples above the main term was sda-srs, you would not return results that just has sda srs or just srs, etc. Some may use lsi9, some lsi 9, and some lsi-9...So you may just have to get a bit crafty with adding additional search terms.

F1nut

LSi 9 - http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/search.php?searchid=8957018

SDA SRS - http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/search.php?searchid=8957027

Add a * to tie them together.

BIZILL

F1nut wrote: »

LSi 9 - http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/search.php?searchid=8957018

SDA SRS - http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/search.php?searchid=8957027

Add a * to tie them together.

thanks jesse. helps some. but i tried it with "lsi*9" and came back with some "lsi 7" action. all good though and still very helpful. thanks.

mmadden28

F1nut wrote: »

LSi 9 - http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/search.php?searchid=8957018

SDA SRS - http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/search.php?searchid=8957027

Add a * to tie them together.

The results you get are deceptive--false positives if you will. Those examples are the same as just searching for 'LSI9' and 'SDASRS' directly, the '*' is in fact ignored. You can verify this by looking at the results and scrolling through the posts, the results are highlighted. In some cases it also seems to act as a wildcard retunring anything so it ignores anything after the * and just returns anything that begins with 'lsi'. I'm still not sure on this the results are just not consistent. Or perhaps its still finding them as anything beginning with 'lsi' but just not highlighting them on the page-like the only things that are highlighted are those matching the search term minus the '*' or something.

BIZILL

mmadden, i'll read all that you posted TOMORROW! i'm so darned tired at the moment. lol.

mmadden28

BIZILL wrote: »

mmadden, i'll read all that you posted TOMORROW! i'm so darned tired at the moment. lol.

he he. I was trying to keep it short but thorough enough to help you narrow your search down. It can get daunting trying to find exactly what your looking for amongst a lot of the chatter.

Here's the Cliff's Notes Version:
Your best bet is to use Google or Bing, etc., and limit the search to the polk site, for example (I think the search term parameters are probably universal):
in the google search bar type:
site:www.polkaudio.com sds-srs

mmadden28

This will give you all the usual iterations for the LSi9:
site:www.polkaudio.com +lsi9 +lsi-9 +"lsi 9"

mmadden28

Or you can do this:
site:www.polkaudio.com +crossover +1.2tl
yields 22200 posts

You want to omit results by a specific member?? Try something like this:
site:www.polkaudio.com +crossover +1.2tl -candyliquor35m
Now you get 20500, a savings of 1700 posts!! :rolleyes:;)

F1nut

You want to omit results by a specific member?? Try something like this:
site:www.polkaudio.com +crossover +1.2tl -candyliquor35m
Now you get 20500, a savings of 1700 posts!!

Brilliant!

shack

F1nut wrote:

Add a * to tie them together.

It seems like this has been discussed a lot on the forum...just do a search. :rolleyes:

Seriously...this has been brought up several times in the past. You can take any 3 letter/number word and add an asterisk (*) to it and the system will look for that combination of letters/numbers. You may get a hit for the exact word or you may get a hit for a word that begins with those letters. For instance: A serch of AR9* yielded 173 posts.

This search engine is not that hard to use and is really quite good when you learn how.

BIZILL

ah, this reminds me of work searches on our system. but we use a "%" sign versus the asterisk.

McLoki

An asterisk added to the search does actually work as you would expect as well. Was looking for LSi crossover thoughts and did a search with "lsi crossover" and got lots of unrelated hits.

changing the search to "LSi* Crossover" got much better and more relevant information. (I am guessing because the LSi Crossover search ignored the LSi and gave me anything with the word crossover in it.)

Typically when I need to find something, I do a site specific google search as listed above...

Michael

NotaSuv

Maybe a sticky on forum searches would cut down on the repeated how to search posts

I am guilty of forgetting the tricks to search sometimes...

Ern Dog

I like the google idea and polk website. I've never tried it that way.

AudioGenics

good info