# Three-letter words for the search engine **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [April 21, 2009, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854 "2009-04-21T15:16:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/malleus_incus_stapes/32/3293_2.png) [@Malleus\_Incus\_Stapes](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malleus_Incus_Stapes)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/1 "2009-04-21T15:16:55Z")
Okay, I underastand, there’s no point in clogging up the search engine looking for “the” and “and”. But honestly, sometimes you need a three-letter word to find what you’re looking for. A few months ago, I was trying to find a thread called “Little Kid Logic”. But guess what? Without the kid part, “little logic” brings up about half the threads that were ever posted. Needless to say, I did not find what I was looking for. Or suppose someone was looking for the epic Ron Thread, and didn’t remember that it was started by melodyharmonius. The only thing you could search for is “Ron”- again, three letters. Some other three letter words that could prove vital to one’s search: Eye Sex Leg Zoo TMI Gnu Spy Sky Kit Shy Red Ewe Lie Pie Men Wax Cow Cat Arm Pro Jew Sew Eve Dog Could we please, please get rid of the three-letter limit? ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/2 "2009-04-21T15:26:11Z")
Aw, c’mon, you know everybody’d just use it to look up “gry”. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/3 "2009-04-21T16:36:41Z")
I’m not sure if vBulletin allows you to specify a list of words smaller then the limit to index. If it’s a feature in vBulletin then I can see this being useful. If it’s not already in vBulletin, then I don’t see that happening. ---
**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:** [April 21, 2009, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/4 "2009-04-21T16:52:50Z")
The smaller the unit, the more intensive the search. Three-letter searches would swamp the system. Here’s my advice: Skip the vB search system altogether and try Google. To use your example, a search on “Straight Dope little kid logic” on Google got me this: [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11047911](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11047911) ---
**Author:** ![Roland\_Orzabal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c2a13f/32.png) [@Roland\_Orzabal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roland_Orzabal)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/5 "2009-04-21T17:18:44Z")
If you haven’t found your thread yet, **Malleus** , I’m pretty sure you were looking for [this one](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=503511). Refining the search to “thread titles only” will filter your results down quite a bit. 🙂 ---
**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:** [April 21, 2009, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/6 "2009-04-21T17:44:54Z")
Other search terms would include OSX, Wii, and XP. Really, it’d be best if the search engine didn’t have the length cutoff at all. Sure, you don’t want “the” and “and” indexed, but then, you also don’t want “them” or “thing” indexed, either. You handle those not by putting in a length cutoff, but by putting them on the badwords index. Of course, at this point, it’d never get implemented, because to do so would require re-indexing the entire board, and that would probably require that the board be shut down for several days, which nobody wants. ---
**Author:** ![SiXSwordS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/49beb7/32.png) [@SiXSwordS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SiXSwordS)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/7 "2009-04-21T17:52:33Z")
You may get some archive results (which will still lead you to the FULL VERSION) but try google using site:boards.straightdope.com before your search arguments. In this case I had to put little kid logic in quotes ---
**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:** [April 21, 2009, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/8 "2009-04-21T18:08:53Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Other search terms would include OSX, Wii, and XP. > > Really, it’d be best if the search engine didn’t have the length cutoff at all. Sure, you don’t want “the” and “and” indexed, but then, you also don’t want “them” or “thing” indexed, either. You handle those not by putting in a length cutoff, but by putting them on the badwords index. > > Of course, at this point, it’d never get implemented, because to do so would require re-indexing the entire board, and that would probably require that the board be shut down for several days, which nobody wants. It’s not a cutoff, it’s a minimum. Which is currently set to 4 letters. “When using the vBulletin default search, this option limits the size of indexed words. The smaller this number is, the larger your search index, and conversely your database is going to be.” ---
**Author:** ![Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/qadgop_the_mercotan/32/83_2.png) [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)\ **Post date:** [April 21, 2009, 10:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/9 "2009-04-21T22:15:39Z")
Most important 3 letter search: QtM 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [April 22, 2009, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/10 "2009-04-22T00:10:03Z")
> [@TubaDiva](#): > > It’s not a cutoff, it’s a minimum. Which is currently set to 4 letters. > > “When using the vBulletin default search, this option limits the size of indexed words. The smaller this number is, the larger your search index, and conversely your database is going to be.” I can see that if words like “the” and “you” were indexed, the size of the index would go up dramatically. In terms of the physical layout, that really means the database itself, since it is likely that the indexes to the files are at least as large as the actual content. On the other hand, the number of three letter words that can exist at all is theoretically limited 26\*\*3. It’s more limited if we exclude the sequences that are not allowed in English, and still more if we disallow grammatical function words such as articles and prepositions. Has anyone looked into what the indexing cost would be under those conditions? ---
**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:** [April 22, 2009, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/11 "2009-04-22T22:12:51Z")
I don’t know how long it would take to re-index the system but I have been told it would mean taking the system offline for a while at least so that could happen – you couldn’t post and couldn’t read. Might take a while. A long while. Unless there’s dire reason to do so it’s best to let the system run so you can see it. ---
**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:** [April 22, 2009, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/12 "2009-04-22T22:28:37Z")
This thread reminds me of an impressive book in my university library - a **complete** Bible concordance (in English - Douay-Rheims Bible) that was at least 100 years old. I looked up _the_, and sure enough, the author had listed all the verses in the Bible that contained the word _the_. I’m pretty sure the poor guy didn’t have a computer to help him build his concordance! ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [April 23, 2009, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/13 "2009-04-23T02:46:18Z")
That’s why it’s called an _exhaustive_ concordance, Noodles. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 7:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/14 "2009-04-24T07:32:27Z")
If google does such a great job, why have the search feature at all? I know a lot of sites that just include a custom Google search… ---
**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:** [April 24, 2009, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/15 "2009-04-24T11:00:17Z")
Why do you have an appendix? It’s the same sort of thing, the search function on vB is built in. It’s about as useful as your appendix sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![SiXSwordS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/49beb7/32.png) [@SiXSwordS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SiXSwordS)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 11:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/16 "2009-04-24T11:51:32Z")
> [@TubaDiva](#): > > It’s about as useful as your appendix sometimes. Like when it becomes infected and bursts and you’re rushed to the hospital where a swarthy masked man uses a vacuum cleaner on your insides and – hopefully – spares you a painful death? ---
**Author:** ![SiXSwordS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/49beb7/32.png) [@SiXSwordS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SiXSwordS)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 11:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/17 "2009-04-24T11:54:19Z")
…and then when you’re recovering you have a heart attack but they can’t call a code blue because the administrator says you have to wait 300 days… ---
**Author:** ![SiXSwordS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/49beb7/32.png) [@SiXSwordS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SiXSwordS)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2009, 1:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/three-letter-words-for-the-search-engine/493854/18 "2009-04-24T13:12:57Z")
…and _then_ you try to look up how to do CPR but you can’t… because it’s only three letters!