# Why can't I search for the word "alone"?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523
**Category:** About This Message Board
**Created:** [January 4, 2003, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523 "2003-01-04T00:11:59Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Arcite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arcite)
#### Post date: [January 4, 2003, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/1 "2003-01-04T00:11:59Z")
I tried to search for the words _movies_ and _alone_, and the search function simply retreived all threads containing the word _movies_. Then I tried a search for just the word _alone_, and got no results. I was searching entire messages, not just titles, and I changed the date restriction to “any date.”
It’s impossible that there are no posts containing the word “alone.” Is “alone” some kind of special reserved search word?
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### Author:  [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)
#### Post date: [January 4, 2003, 1:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/2 "2003-01-04T01:17:50Z")
Did you search & see if your post you just wrote shows up?
The search engine is pretty freaky sometimes. (Also, no can search for 3 letter words, this is because it would make the database too big.)
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### Author:  [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)
#### Post date: [January 4, 2003, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/3 "2003-01-04T01:24:00Z")
Did you search & see if your post you just wrote shows up?
The search engine is pretty freaky sometimes. (Also, no can search for 3 letter words, this is because it would make the database too big.)
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### Author:  [@Reeder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Reeder)
#### Post date: [January 4, 2003, 3:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/4 "2003-01-04T03:08:42Z")
Interesting…alone doesn’t show up. Not even when just searching this forum.
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### Author:  [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)
#### Post date: [January 4, 2003, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/5 "2003-01-04T05:30:00Z")
As **handy** said, the search engine’s freaky, and having one of those spells with this. I put in a search for other five-letter words that have appeared in this thread: “tried” and “forum”. Only the latter showed up in the search. Quite odd.
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### Author:  [@Arcite](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arcite)
#### Post date: [January 4, 2003, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/6 "2003-01-04T05:45:51Z")
Bizarre. I just tried searching for “anyway” and “always”. Nothing.
One unusual thing I noticed is that when I search for these words that _should_ be generating results, I don’t get that intermediary “Your search is in progress” screen. I get taken right from the screen with the form on it to the “Sorry, no matches” message.
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### Author:  [@Cazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cazzle)
#### Post date: [January 4, 2003, 5:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/7 "2003-01-04T05:45:58Z")
No idea why this happens, however you can search for the word “alone” if you stick an asterisk at either end:
_alone_
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### Author:  [@Orange\_Skinner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orange_Skinner)
#### Post date: [January 4, 2003, 8:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/8 "2003-01-04T08:19:20Z")
Is it possible that there are so many search matches that nothing comes up? That would make sense in regards to the “anyway” and “always” searches, too.
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### Author:  [@Orange\_Skinner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orange_Skinner)
#### Post date: [January 4, 2003, 8:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/9 "2003-01-04T08:23:30Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Ice Wolf \*
> \*\*I put in a search for other five-letter words that have appeared in this thread: “tried” and “forum”. Only the latter showed up in the search. Quite odd. \*\*
“Tried” not showing up would make sense too…it would have thousands of matches, whereas “forum” isn’t exactly hugely popular. I don’t think it has anything to do with word size (it’s not size that counts, but how frequently you use it, har har…not funny). I’m betting the search is just too broad for the engine to handle, and it just bumps you to the “no matches” screen by default.
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### Author:  [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)
#### Post date: [January 4, 2003, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/10 "2003-01-04T08:44:17Z")
> [@](#):
>
> _Orig. by Orange Skinner_
> I’m betting the search is just too broad for the engine to handle, and it just bumps you to the “no matches” screen by default.
Even though I left it as “yesterday or newer”, solely for this forum? I’d have thought that was the least broad a scope of all. Hmm …
Usually, anyway, I search for word-terms that aren’t all that common. Usually proper nouns.
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### Author:  [@handy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handy)
#### Post date: [January 4, 2003, 5:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/11 "2003-01-04T17:31:00Z")
At [http://www.google.com/](http://www.google.com/)
You can search for: “straightdope alone” (no quotes) & get some results. I dont know if they index the forum often.
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### Author:  [@White\_Lightning](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/White_Lightning)
#### Post date: [January 4, 2003, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/12 "2003-01-04T19:26:57Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by \*\*Orange Skinner \*\*\*
> I’m betting the search is just too broad for the engine to handle, and it just bumps you to the “no matches” screen by default.
I’m pretty sure that’s not it. I don’t advise that anyone try it, but it’s fully possible to make searches that turn up thousands of results.
Maybe posts take a little bit to get added to the search index? That wouldn’t explain the original problem of not finding “alone” in a search, but it might explain why some of the other searches for words used in this thread didn’t turn up.
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### Author:  [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)
#### Post date: [January 4, 2003, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/13 "2003-01-04T20:45:36Z")
No, any post that is made is either added to the Search Index at post time, or else it is not added at all. The only exception is if the Board is having serious problems, in which case it is possible (but unlikely) that only part of the post would be parsed into the search index. It typically is an all-or-nothing affair.
Many words are excluded from the Search index by default. These words are listed in a file called “badwords.php”. An example of some of the words in it are:
```php
$badwords["a"]=1;
$badwords["a's"]=1;
$badwords["able"]=1;
$badwords["about"]=1;
$badwords["above"]=1;
$badwords["according"]=1;
$badwords["accordingly"]=1;
$badwords["across"]=1;
$badwords["actually"]=1;
$badwords["after"]=1;
$badwords["afterwards"]=1;
$badwords["again"]=1;
$badwords["against"]=1;
$badwords["ain't"]=1;
$badwords["all"]=1;
$badwords["allow"]=1;
$badwords["allows"]=1;
$badwords["almost"]=1;
$badwords["alone"]=1;
$badwords["along"]=1;
```
…and so forth.
Note that “alone” is in the list. Now, an Admin with server access can set the flag to be “0”, which inicates that a word is not flagged as bad, or they can delete the entry, or add new ones. After discovering that the words “forum”, “post”, “board”, etc. were taking up a disproportionate amount of space in the index, I added them to my index.
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### Author:  [@rowrrbazzle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rowrrbazzle)
#### Post date: [January 4, 2003, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/14 "2003-01-04T21:09:18Z")
Since “alone” isn’t indexed, what happens when you search for “alone\*” like **cazzle** suggested? The software doesn’t start a full text search of all posts in the selected ranges, does it? Or does it?
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### Author:  [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2003, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/15 "2003-01-05T16:47:20Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by rowrrbazzle \*
> \*_Since “alone” isn’t indexed, what happens when you search for "alone_" like **cazzle** suggested? The software doesn’t start a full text search of all posts in the selected ranges, does it? Or does it? \*\*
Wow. I need to confirm some things, but using the asterisks _appears_ to do just what you say it does. Fascinating…
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### Author:  [@bluecanary](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bluecanary)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2003, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/16 "2003-01-05T19:52:34Z")
How did you get the badwords.php index?
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### Author:  [@Algernon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Algernon)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2003, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/17 "2003-01-06T15:11:58Z")
**bluecanary** , since **Anthracite** hasn’t been back to your question yet, I’ll attempt a speculation.
**Anthracite** has her own message board that runs the same software as the SDMB. As a consequence, she has goddess-like powers to access the information she shared. She noted that these were the _default_ settings for the software.
Hope that helps.
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### Author:  [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2003, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/18 "2003-01-06T19:15:47Z")
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Algernon \*
> \*\ ***bluecanary** , since **Anthracite** hasn’t been back to your question yet, I’ll attempt a speculation.
>
> **Anthracite** has her own message board that runs the same software as the SDMB. As a consequence, she has goddess-like powers to access the information she shared. She noted that these were the _default_ settings for the software.
>
> Hope that helps. \*\*
Yup. My Board I run is available via the “WWW” below my post. It runs the same exact version of software as the SDMB.
The “badwords.php” doesn’t have any sensitive info in it, nor is it Board code - it’s just a honkin’ big list of words. So I felt safe in posting it.
I honestly don’t have an answer to the asterisks question - I was involved in Moderator selection issues this weekend. I will ask on the vBulletin developers site to see if I can get a better answer.
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### Author:  [@Arnold\_Winkelried](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arnold_Winkelried)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2003, 11:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/19 "2003-01-06T23:58:19Z")
As Anthracite said - the word alone is not indexed because of its presence in the file of words not to be indexed.
Why does alone\* work? Because it finds threads where you have the word alone followed by any number of non-blank characters. So “alone” by itself would not be indexed, but “aloneness” would be.
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### Author:  [@Una\_Persson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Una_Persson)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2003, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-cant-i-search-for-the-word-alone/146523/20 "2003-01-07T01:48:45Z")
I see now what was being asked. I can’t get the search string “_alone_” to return a thread which _only_ has alone appearing as “alone”. If anyone else can, then it would need investigation. Otherwise, I think everything is behaving as I said it was.
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