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I've been trying to use the new Google search on news.povray.org a few times
now and it just seems unable to do the needed tasks.
I cannot:
Limit the search to a specific poster. Typing the name of a person find
posts where the name appear anywhere inside the message. For people in the
community that are often referred to, this makes it utterly inefficient to
try to search for messages actually posted by them.
Search for messages with specific words in the subject line. This often one
of the most useful ways to search newsgroup messages, but Google makes it
impossible, by not differentiating between the subject line and the rest of
the page.
And most important: Google does not find all messages that matches the
search.
A search for '"toy lamp" "light beam"' does not find this message:
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C3fc7e122%40news.povray.org%3E/?ttop=197616&toff=900
A search for 'rune patina' does not find this message:
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C3fc74d84%40news.povray.org%3E/?ttop=197616&toff=900
A search for 'asteroid apache' does not find this message:
http://news.povray.org/povray.binaries.images/thread/%3C3fc7c3e7%40news.povray.org%3E/?ttop=197616&toff=900
Really, trying to search for a name + subject line combination for specific
messages almost consistently fails to find the message. And this is not new
messages that Google haven't had time to index yet. What use is this search
then?
Rune
--
3D images and anims, include files, tutorials and more:
rune|vision: http://runevision.com
POV-Ray Ring: http://webring.povray.co.uk
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> Really, trying to search for a name + subject line combination for specific
> messages almost consistently fails to find the message. And this is not new
> messages that Google haven't had time to index yet. What use is this search
> then?
I admit that it bugs me too. I've spend some time tweaking the pages to try
to ensure google indexes them all and while it has improved I still do not
know why it does some and not others.
There are ways to make search work on specific combinations (e.g. subject,
author) by generating special indexes for them that google can crawl.
The other alternative is to use built-in search of our own, however this has
the disadvantage of having to access the database (since the entire site is
kept inside the DB). Plus I'd rather fix the google issue so that folks who
search from outside our site can find the same articles.
Nevertheless it should not be a major issue to add a separate subject or author
search as a supplement to google I guess.
At this point I really would like to know if anyone can spot a pattern to the
pages it indexes and those it doesn't.
-- Chris
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