Search work around with Google ...

KoolBear · Post by **KoolBear** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 1:45 pm

Googling your way out

In some cases searching with phpBB search system just don't work too good (e.g. you are looking for a word that system rejects). Still you can always try to google (www.google.com).

The first thing you should try is a phrase like: perdition something (where something is a word/phrase you are looking for). When you don't hit anything when searching for the whole phrase then just try some part of it. It's also helpful to look for synonyms e.g. ~upgrade will find upgrade but also upgrading.

To look in a specific site (like descentbb.net) use: site:descentbb.net perdition something.

For more tips see: www.google.com/help/.

KB

Top Gun · Post by **Top Gun** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 3:52 pm

Koolbear, you don't know how much easier you've just made it to find things on PD with that tip.

Sarge · Post by **Sarge** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 4:05 pm

That's pretty dang kool, KB!

Nice One!

roid · Post by **roid** » Tue Dec 13, 2005 11:43 pm

unfortunately it still doesn't bypass the problems we have been having with DBB search since the upgrade.

ie: http://www.google.com.au/search?q=site% ... revolution
does not show up either of these pages:

phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=7863
phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=146007

KoolBear · Post by **KoolBear** » Wed Dec 14, 2005 12:19 am

I think I know why, this version of phpbb isn't spider/bot friendly, the newer versions are.

Is this an issue I can resolve? I am not sure but I will try.

UPDATE: I found what I believe is an update for the search routine. I will research it a little more and test it on the test bb I have setup.

Please feel free to "bump" this thread if you don't see something within the next week or so

KB

MD-2389 · Post by **MD-2389** » Wed Dec 14, 2005 2:18 pm

Top Gun wrote:Koolbear, you don't know how much easier you've just made it to find things on PD with that tip.

Especially since that PD has no search functionality to speak of.

Koolbear: Its probably being blocked from indexing the forums because of the robots.txt file in the root dir. We had a major problem in the past with multiple search engines indexing the entire board at once, which REALLY slowed things down for us. I don't have the exact figures handy, but it also ramped up our bandwith usage quite a bit.

KoolBear · Post by **KoolBear** » Wed Dec 14, 2005 6:58 pm

I doubt it, since I wasn't able to find ANY robots.txt file

MD-2389 · Post by **MD-2389** » Thu Dec 15, 2005 6:34 pm

If thats the case, then Google hasn't gotten around to caching all the threads again.