Topic: Is there a way ...

[Gumbo]

Is there a way to search for the phrase "yas yas yas"?

[Slack]

You should be able to search it just the way you have written it --- but it is not finding any hits.  Which is weird, as there are certainly some posts with "yas yas yas" in them. Our Search expert is Rivers --- let's see if he shows up and we can ask him.  In the meantime, that search works fine in Weeniepedia - you'll get some songs with that phrase.

[Gumbo]

Ok, thanks. I'll put a beer out on the table and see if he shows up

[uncle bud]

I've mentioned before I've had trouble with the search function on short words sometimes. No idea why but it's a drag.

[Pan]

I've mentioned before I've had trouble with the search function on short words sometimes. No idea why but it's a drag.

Yeah it's a drag, when you're trying to look for something like "Blues in F" 

Cheers

Pan

[Mike Billo]

  I tried eliminating the third "yas" and Googled "yas yas" and ............sure enough
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Duck%27s_Yas-Yas-Yas

[Gumbo]

Good tip, Mike. I used google to search weeniecampbell.com and it came up with 7 hits, 4 of which were lyrics threads. Funnily enough the Stump Johnson lyrics thread is not one of them 

[Gumbo]

Searching weeniepedia does bring up many many more hits though - that'll keep me happy for a while Thanks Slack!

EDIT actually it shows 9 results I thought the option to paginate to the first 500 results at the bottom of the page meant there were more pages of results!!

[Rivers]

Apologies, I've been very busy with various things.

The forum built-in search has always been flaky, the reasons are buried deep within the software & data architecture.

But you can easily leverage Google's massive R&D in 'yas yas' search technology. Running a Google Advanced Search restricting it to weeniecambell.com returns 8 pages of hits(!), and you can feel good about making the most of their robots indexing the site several times a day.

For a simple site search using Google you don't have to go to the Google Advanced Search page. Below the site search input text box to your left, click the drop-down initially labelled 'This topic' or 'This board' or 'Entire forum', depending on where you are. Select Google as your search context. What's not immediately intuitive when you look at it is that the Google search results are restricted to our site, which makes it a powerful tool for searching wc.com

Here are the two options, first starting from Google's Advanced Search page, and second using the site search's dropdown Google option. The results are identical. The benefits of going to the Advanced Search page at Google, rather than just using the site search's Google dropdown option, are that you can apply more rules to further limit or broaden the search.

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[Rivers]

Pan, here are the Google weenie search results for the term 'key of F': https://www.google.com/search?q=key+of+F&sitesearch=weeniecampbell.com

Whew, 28 pages of results... in this case I'd probably go into the Google Advanced Search and add some more search terms, maybe limiting some others. 'Blues' is generally not worth including as a search term when you're searching Weenie, reasons being 1) it's built-in contextually to people's understanding of the site, and 2) it may well not have been typed anywhere in the thread, see reason 1) 

[Rivers]

I just thought of another reason to use Google to search weenie. Results will include the whole site. For example, searching for "The Return Of The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of" will find the site portal front page article.

Currently Google is limited when it indexes weeniepedia. During the bandwidth crisis back in December we restricted robots from full text indexing the wiki. You get results, but with no full text description. Perhaps it's time to turn the Google bots loose on weeniepedia again for a trial period.

Here's a search restricted to weeniepedia for the term 'buddy': https://www.google.com/search?as_q=buddy&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_nlo=&as_nhi=&lr=&cr=&as_qdr=all&as_sitesearch=weeniecampbell.com%2Fwiki%2F&as_occt=any&safe=images&tbs=&as_filetype=&as_rights=#q=buddy+site:weeniecampbell.com/wiki/&lr=&safe=images&as_qdr=all&filter=0&bav=on.2,or.r_cp.&bvm=bv.48293060,d.eWU&fp=7c03f8e069113290&biw=1536&bih=1395

[Slack]

I knew we'd get a thorough analysis. 

I'd say have at least Goggle, indexing weeniepedia.

[Rivers]

OK, I'll turn off the restriction and monitor bandwidth usage.

[Later: Done. It'll take the searchbots a couple of days to spot the change]

[Gumbo]

Thank you, Rivers. That is very helpful - (google seem to be trying to hide their Advanced search function behind that little icon).

91 results and some very interesting topics showing up, too!

[Rivers]

You are most welcome Gumbo, glad to help.

Configuring weeniepedia for full indexing has had no discernable effect on bandwidth usage, while returning much more informative search results when using Google to search wc.com. The obvious conclusion is we should keep it on. Switching it off was probably an overreaction to what we were experiencing at the time when we were basically trying stuff to prevent bandwidth blowout.