# A problem with searching

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-problem-with-searching/217847>\
**Category:** About This Message Board\
**Created:** [December 9, 2003, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-problem-with-searching/217847 "2003-12-09T03:27:22Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 11\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2003, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-problem-with-searching/217847/1 "2003-12-09T03:27:22Z")

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There appears to be a bug in the search engine. I’ve been trying for the better part of the day to find an old thread, but no go. The first time, I set my search to “A year ago or older”, since I thought that the thread was more than a year ago. After the expected long wait, I got to a screen that told me that sorry, nothing was found to match my search terms. So I go back to the search input page, and change my search to “A year ago or newer”. Eventually, I get a blank page. I try “any date”, and get the same blank page. I wait several hours and try again… The same. And by “blank page”, I mean exactly that: When I view source, the entire page consists of \<html\>\<body\>\</body\>\</html\> . What’s happening to the search engine, and how can we get around it?

For what it’s worth, btw, the thread I was trying to find was a Cafe Society thread about the movie _The Time Machine_, in which I posted some calculations concerning the Moon.

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**Author:** ![Arnold\_Winkelried](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2003, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-problem-with-searching/217847/2 "2003-12-09T05:02:01Z")

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There was talk today of rebuilding the search index. Perhaps that is still happening.

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**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2003, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-problem-with-searching/217847/3 "2003-12-09T05:08:47Z")

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I get the same thing on all searches.

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**Author:** ![TubaDiva](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tubadiva/32/507_2.png) [@TubaDiva](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TubaDiva)\
**Post date:** [December 9, 2003, 7:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-problem-with-searching/217847/4 "2003-12-09T19:56:04Z")

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The database was, again, corrupted and had to be rebuilt.

Hopefully things are better now . . . however, if it’s still not working as you would like, I have no clue as to how to fix it and I apologize.

your humble TubaDiva  
Administrator

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2003, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-problem-with-searching/217847/5 "2003-12-10T00:13:48Z")

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OK, I’m getting non-blank pages now. It’s still telling me no matches, but at least we’re on speaking terms again.

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**Author:** ![Flamsterette\_X](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/41988e/32.png) [@Flamsterette\_X](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flamsterette_X)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2003, 2:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-problem-with-searching/217847/6 "2003-12-10T02:01:27Z")

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Maybe “time” is one of those words that the search engine doesn’t index, due to its popularity as a word on the boards? I know there was a thread about this some time ago, and **Una Persson** posted a link to the “bad words” you mustn’t search for.

F\_X

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**Author:** ![Flamsterette\_X](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/41988e/32.png) [@Flamsterette\_X](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flamsterette_X)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2003, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-problem-with-searching/217847/7 "2003-12-10T02:10:48Z")

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[This](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&postid=1912542&highlight=machine#post1912542) might be it, only there are no calculations in the post. It’s about the movie _The Time Machine_, and that’s the only one I could find in [the search](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/search.php?s=&action=showresults&searchid=1045556&sortby=lastpost&sortorder=descending).

Hope that helps…

F\_X

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**Author:** ![manhattan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/manhattan/32/7_2.png) [@manhattan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/manhattan)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2003, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-problem-with-searching/217847/8 "2003-12-10T02:25:06Z")

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The calculations are on the second page. Dunno whether it was a prohibited word or what, but user=Chronos, forum=Cafe Society and keyword=moon brought it right up. Apparently so did keyword=machine.

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**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\
**Post date:** [December 10, 2003, 5:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-problem-with-searching/217847/9 "2003-12-10T05:02:42Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Flamsterette\_X \*  
> **I know there was a thread about this some time ago, and Una Persson posted a link to the “bad words” you mustn’t search for.**

It’s not a matter of you musn’t search for them, they just are common words that aren’t in the Index. So searching on them doesn’t do any good.

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**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2003, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-problem-with-searching/217847/10 "2003-12-11T07:00:45Z")

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That is indeed the thread, which makes me wonder why I didn’t find it. I used keywords “time machine” (without quotes, of course), search titles only, forum Cafe Society, username Chronos, a year ago or older. Even if “time” is a badword, the search engine should still have processed the search on “machine”, right? Is the search engine perhaps case-specific? I don’t think I capitalized “time machine” in my search.

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**Author:** ![Una\_Persson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/una_persson/32/346_2.png) [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)\
**Post date:** [December 11, 2003, 6:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-problem-with-searching/217847/11 "2003-12-11T18:50:10Z")

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OK, Chronos. I can’t test here since the Search is so slow, and I can’t view the source code from where I am, but I did some testing on my Board to confirm.

It seems, from testing searching for a thread titled “Snopes Siting”, that the terms in the field are AND delimited by default. That is, I did a “Search on titles” for

Snopes

and it worked. I did a search for

Snopes Siting

and it worked. Then I did a search on

Snopes Siting Wolverine

and it failed. Thus, it looks like it’s doing an AND. And if one of the words you are searching for is a “badword”, then perhaps it returns a “fail”, and the AND fails. Does that make sense?

You can also use “OR”. This search in my test:

Snopes Siting OR Wolverine

did work, for example.