You don’t have to make your own search. It turns out Google has already made one!
Users can still search the strait dope by using the ‘site:’ tag on google search.
The syntax is “site:siteyouwanttosearch.com termyourelookingfor”
For example putting “site:straightdope.com cats” into google will search only inside the domain straightdope.com for the term ‘cats.’
It works quite well, gl.
I thought that the Google search spiders weren’t supposed to crawl the boards for search indexing. Also, when I try this, searching for my own username, I don’t get any hits at all, even though I’m sure I’ve posted once or twice.
I entered the following search on google: **site:boards.straightdope.com democrats **
It got no hits. Case closed.
When you enter: site:straightdope.com cats, the results all come from the main page (column, mailbag), not from the boards.
Reminds me of something: when the Board signed up with GoogleAds, I thought TPTB said Google’s crawlbots would then be allowed to roam the forums. Obviously, that hasn’t happened. Was my impression mistaken, or was there a change of plan?
I’d search for the thread on the subject, but . . . .
You were mistaken. There was never a proposal to open the boards to bots.
As I recall, the googlebots did crawl and archive the threads, but of course the dopers went into a tizzy not unlike the recent brouhaha over banner ads. TPTB apologized and made Google stop.
I don’t much care one way or the other but what is the problem with it? Does it slow down the board more?
As I recall, there was a belief it slowed the boards down and some posters felt it violated their privacy.
I don’t quite appreciate it, but they did not want their posts to be that public. I think in the end that it has hurt the board as Google is the #1 portal to the web at this point and most of the SDMB content is invisible. A little shows up in places through sites like boardreader.com
A perk of membership is supposed to be access to searching the archive. The googlebots made searching via google possible and upset everyone who wanted the search to stay members-only.
I searched BoardReader for democrats and got 1600 hits.
Remember to put straightdope.com in the site/domain field.