# Can't search **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [December 24, 2010, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-search/565309 "2010-12-24T19:40:08Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2010, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-search/565309/1 "2010-12-24T19:40:08Z")
I’ve been getting variants of these errors whenever I try to search today: Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 536870912 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 9 bytes) in /home/straightdope/boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/search.php on line 1007 Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 536870912 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 24 bytes) in /home/straightdope/boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/includes/class\_core.php on line 3278 ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2010, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-search/565309/2 "2010-12-24T19:59:31Z")
What were you searching for, and did you use any words like “the” or “a”? ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [December 28, 2010, 2:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-search/565309/3 "2010-12-28T02:02:41Z")
No, nothing that short - I’d have expected the system to kick those out anyway. Might have been something like **apple thief** or **white machine**. At this point, I don’t recall exactly what I was searching for, but I was able to find what I was after on Google with a **site:boards.straightdope.com term1 term2** search. Now that I think of it, would it be possible to give our beloved hamsters a bit of a rest and change the board search to generate a Google search instead of searching the message base directly? ---
**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 28, 2010, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/cant-search/565309/4 "2010-12-28T03:27:17Z")
Reported. Jenny