hints on how to search?

[Gomez]

I have been here for 5 yrs now and I will tell ya what. I HATE DOING SEARCHES on this site.

Are there any secrets or punctuation or ANYTHING that will keep from sifting through the thousands of pages of threads that have useless info.

Normally I have always kept up on every thread that is posted everyday. But I am now doing a more difficult (because much less people have done it) B6D swap. I keep getting pages upon pages of nothing.

What are some of the proper techniques? "abc" *de-fg* [HIJK} I really don't know and searching fouond nothing.

No kidding here guys. I searched "b3 ecu" and got not a single return.

I know there is no use complaining because this is not my board and rightfully so I will be told to leave if I don't like it. Even though I am not a newbie here I feel for them. Searching isn't the easiest thing to do with sooo much info to be had.

PLEASE HELP

[Charlie1717]

The best thing to find very specific stuff is using quotation marks. But the biggest issue is it does not search for 3 letter words. Such as Ecu or b3, bp, b6t etc.

[Gomez]

OK, nice to know. So it is pretty much quotation marks and thats it. I thought I remember someone using something else or maybe that was a different forum. idk thanks though.

[lessersivad]

If you use an asterisk like this, b6*, you'll get results like this;

http://www.fordfestiva.com/forums/search.php?searchid=579650

Just a suggestion.

[bassman]

I never get good results with the search, I will start a new thread and get some flack but often it results in getting info on what I need.

[SimonTuffGuy]

Using *'s are wildcards and will help for items less than 3 letters. Searching for anything less than 3 letters is very resource intensive on the site, which is why we have the limit in place.

[DrMaxwellEdison]

the one thing that annoys me is the delay between searches, I'm not complaining because sometimes that's what I need to think of more inclusive or more exact search terms to find better results...... I just don't like to wait sometimes, I guess patience isn't a virtue I don't possess.....

[SimonTuffGuy]

Again - the search delay is in place because of the resources required to run a search... Think about it this way: you search for text that is 3-digits long, the software looked at the database and runs a SQL query against it, almost 410,000 posts need to be searched (depending on the options you run), and then reported back as a result.

Even if 5 members are running a search at a time? That's a lot of load... And then to run a search, get your results, and search again 3 seconds later because they weren't right.... You get the point?

I know some sites offer special perks, like lesser restrictions between posts and searches, for those that donate... But I don't think we have anything like that, aside from more PM space and a donator forum.