As a guest, i can't search?????

[rowrrbazzle]

For a long while, boardreader.com seemed to stop indexing the SDMB and I stopped using it. Searching boardreader for myself just now comes up with only 163 hits, all in the range January 16 to May 16, and that includes where I’ve been quoted. I know I’ve made many posts between now and May. And an SDMB search turns up about 210 posts of mine in that same January-May range.

The earliest SDMB post currently on boardreader appears to be from September 6, 2003.

As mnemosyne said, boardreader is worth a try for guests, but it’s limited.

[Dan_Norder]

OK, kind of a question/suggestion:

Is there any reason why guests couldn’t be pointed to Google to search with it set up to only search the boards.straightdope.com domain?

(And, as an added bonus, if the board signs up for Google Adwords and then uses the SiteSearch option they may even make some money out of the deal.)

The server-churning search function then is displaced to Google, who is set up to handle those sorts of things, and everyone is happy, right?

[Algernon]

@Dan Norder

Is there any reason why guests couldn’t be pointed to Google to search with it set up to only search the boards.straightdope.com domain?

Hmmm. Are you sure that Google scans the posts? (I find that hard to believe… how would they have access to the database?) To test, I tried numerous searches, and nothing was ever returned as a hit.

[Chronos]

(I find that hard to believe… how would they have access to the database?)

The same way they access all other web pages, and the same way that you or I do. They follow links. Google cares no more about whether a page is dynamic than a human does. However, this board probably has a robots.txt file, or similar convention, which explicitly tells Google (and other spiders) to stay out. And Google, being nice, respects that.

[Algernon]

Thanks Chronos. I didn’t think it through.

As a follow-up question, if the spider starts on the main forum page and follows every link, and then every link on those pages, and on and on… wouldn’t the posts actually scanned be a small percentage of the total posts in the SDMB?

[bordelond]

@Chronos

Even for those of us who have paid and are therefore allowed to use the search engine, it’s still erratic and unreliable.

You know, I read this same sentiment every now and then on this board. Then I compare to my own experience – in five years, I’ve had not a single problem with the SDMB Search function, with the exception that very occasionally it may take more than 2-3 minutes to return results. Once in a blue moon, it might even time out.

Are others really having continual problems searching?

[Nightwatch_Trailer]

I have the same problems as bordelond, except that searches take several minutes almost as often as not. Otherwise the search function works fine for me.

[Dan_Norder]

@Chronos

The same way they access all other web pages, and the same way that you or I do. They follow links. Google cares no more about whether a page is dynamic than a human does. However, this board probably has a robots.txt file, or similar convention, which explicitly tells Google (and other spiders) to stay out. And Google, being nice, respects that.

If that were the case, and guests can read all the posts anyway, and they wanted to offload the drain that searches put on the server, wouldn’t it be smarter for them to stop blocking Google’s robot and let it index the pages?

That way the searching is left to the company that does it best, guests can search so they don’t ask the same questions over and over and registered users can search without fearing that they’ll bring the whole board screeching to a halt?

And you’d think the board earning money from using Google’s SiteSearch might be a plus too, wouldn’t you?

Or are they not really looking for win-win solutions?