Search results are terrible!

[Gili]

There is something fundamentally broken about nabble's search interface and I'm not the first person to point this out...

1. Go to nabble.com
2. Enter "nio-discuss" in search field.
3. Notice how the forum "nio-discuss" never shows up in the search results. The results I get look like spam.
4. I am expecting the search results to contain http://nio-discuss.970641.n3.nabble.com/ near the top.

I await your reply.

Thanks,
Gili

[Camo]

When I searched Using "nio discuss" I found THIS Topic immeadiately.
You only get out of a search what is there to begin with.
The database you are searching does not contain refrences to every nabble forum created, (nor does the database of Nabble.com (which uses bing search rather than a search of its own database)) for that you need google. The database related to this forum, which yeilds results of searches of this forum,
will only contain results related to topics posted by you about your nio forum, as is now the case!

[Gili]

    I don't understand. Why doesn't the search engine include forum names *as well* as the bodies of actual posts? If you search the Help forum you will find other people expecting to be able to search for forum names as opposed to contents of posts.

Gili

On 14/06/2011 12:31 AM, Camo [via Nabble Support] wrote:

When I searched Using "Nio discuss" I found THIS Topic immeadiately.
You only get out of a search what is there to begin with.
The database you are searching does not contain refrences to every nabble forum created, for that you need google. The database related to this forum, which yeilds results of searches of this forum,
will only contain results related to topics posted by you about your nio forum, as is now the case!

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[Camo]

I dont know why nabble dosent use a database of its users to run its search, maybe its a user privacy issue. :)

[GregChapman]

I know the problem with incomplete search results.

I've stopped using Google Custom search for a number of my small hobby sites and turned to http://atomz.com/ instead.

Their search service is financed by Google Ads but the ads only seem to appear on the initial search results page not on every one you generate. I like it because it has the advantage that you can generate a full site search instantly on demand and don't have to wait for Google to choose when to crawl your site.

Could be a solution for Nabble too!

[Gili]

On 14/06/2011 12:37 AM, Camo [via Nabble Support] wrote:

What Is forum called? is it 'nio discuss"?

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    It's called nio-discuss which is precisely what I enter in the search box. I posted the link in my first post: http://nio-discuss.970641.n3.nabble.com/

Gili

[Gili]

Can I please have an official response from the Nabble team?

Gili

[Peter <Nabble>]

Nabble search box on main page is intended to be a general search box. If you want to search for specific topics in your forum, use the search box in your forum.

[Gili]

Peter,

    If you read my original post you will find I am complaining I can't find the forum in the first place. It's fine being able to search *inside* a forum, but not being able to search *for* a forum is a serious problem. At the very least I should be able to look up a forum by its name. It doesn't make sense that I enter an exact match of the forum name and it still fails to come up in search results.

Gili

On 12/07/2011 2:59 PM, Peter <Nabble> [via Nabble Support] wrote:

Nabble search box on main page is intended to be a general search box. If you want to search for specific topics in your forum, use the search box in your forum.

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[GregChapman]

Gili wrote

If you read my original post you will find I am complaining I can't
find the forum in the first place.

I think the trouble is that no search engine can find it. I guess because it's a mail list archive with little traffic and so not much of a footprint on the web.

I even tried these terms on Google:

"nio-discuss" site:nabble.com

and only got eleven hits, none of them for your mail list archive.

Nevertheless, I sympathise. I would have expected the search box on Nabble's own home page to be able to produce a list of all hosted sites.

On a related matter, I recall someone else complaining that the results from the "More" link under "What's Cool" hardly points to worthwhile results that show off Nabble at it's best. I see that the tool-tip for that link says "Latest embeddable web apps". The trouble with that search is that it just produces a list of people's experiments and investigations, sites of empty shells and test forums that don't give a good impression of Nabble at all. It might be better to have that link show sites with most traffic, or most content in the "CSS change appearance" box.  - Just an idea for Nabble to work on after the release of Templates! :-)

[Gili]

    If you go to http://code.google.com/p/jace/ there is a search box on top called "Search Projects". You can enter any project name there and it'll find it even if it has no activity. All Nabble needs to do is restrict the search database to forum names.

Gili

On 13/07/2011 4:34 AM, GregChapman [via Nabble Support] wrote:

Gili wrote:

If you read my original post you will find I am complaining I can't
find the forum in the first place.

I think the trouble is that no search engine can find it. I guess because it's a mail list archive with little traffic and so not much of a footprint on the web.

I even tried these terms on Google:

"nio-discuss" site:nabble.com

and only got eleven hits, none of them for your mail list archive.

Nevertheless, I sympathise. I would have expected the search box on Nabble's own home page to be able to produce a list of all hosted sites.

On a related matter, I recall someone else complaining that the results from the "More" link under "What's Cool" hardly points to worthwhile results that show off Nabble at it's best. I see that the tool-tip for that link says "Latest embeddable web apps". The trouble with that search is that it just produces a list of people's experiments and investigations, sites of empty shells and test forums that don't give a good impression of Nabble at all. It might be better to have that link show sites with most traffic, or most content in the "CSS change appearance" box.  - Just an idea for Nabble to work on after the release of Templates! :-)

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[Peter <Nabble>]

It's just that that box is not intended to do that.
Other people have already suggested this.
We will take your suggestion in consideration for future updates.

[Gili]

On 13/07/2011 3:25 PM, Peter <Nabble> [via Nabble Support] wrote:

It's just that that box is not intended to do that.
Other people have already suggested this.
We will take your suggestion in consideration for future updates.

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Peter,

    Are you saying there is another search box that does this? Or are you saying that you don't plan to add such a box but you might fix the existing search box in the future?

Thanks,
Gili