We do get a few members asking how to search the Forum properly after struggling to find what they're after. So here are a few notes on the issue:


Part of the problem we feel is that we're all so used to the way Google's search algorithm works...it's incredibly accurate, amazingly exact, and lightning fast. It even prompts you...like it can read your mind!


Google's genius is the result of 22 years of work and billions of dollars invested. Plus there are now over 4.54 billion pages on the internet to search find that exact context.


So whatever solution we use for our tiny forum, we're going to be at a disadvantage...we do have a solid forum base, with 26,000 posts, bit it's a drop in the ocean compared to what Google uses to find exact matches.


But working with what we have can produce good results... if we are prepared to ask the right questions...ones that our system can handle.


So when I looked up some example search phrases that folks have struggled with, like "how to introduce a visiting dog", I did get a lot of random results. The search function seemed to have difficulty with the long keyword and served up results that contained any one of the words within the phrase. Plus one of the words was 'dog', so there was a lot of results.


But if you narrow that down and just searched for 'visitors', then you start to get some more targeted results - only 6 results. But the real issue behind that search phrase (how to introduce a visiting dog) could be an aggression one, so I tried searching for 'aggression visitors', and got much more targeted results. 


So we think it does relate to how we ask the questions on our forum, which is pretty big with 26K posts, but so tiny in comparison to other major search engines.


Trying another search for a few more specific keywords... like just the word 'cyclist', and we got some very exact results which were very much related. 


And also the word 'biting' really dug up some gold.


I think you see what we're getting at here...you need to try imagine what keywords other people with a similar problem have typed in and try search for those words... often one at a time, then introduce another etc and see what you get.


Hoping this helps!


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