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Why can't the search feature support AND??? RRS feed

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    Hi all,

    I want to search for something.  in my case, I wanted to search for a keyword AND the word download (so I could find where to download that item vs. all the discussion on it.

    But there seems to be no way to tell the search to support AND or OR.  Is there any reason why a forum designed for developers doesn't support this?  Or is it some hidden technique (I have to use regex or C notations to get those features, etc.)?

    Also, I would still love to see support for date or product version relevant searches (see above for why using 2012 doesn't work...)

    And, of course, why it doesn't respect quoted strings either....

    Thanks!

    me (and yes, I DO mark correct answers)


    • Edited by FletcherJ Tuesday, April 16, 2013 4:42 PM
    Tuesday, April 16, 2013 4:41 PM
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    Kamin,

    I would have thought they would have use Bing to replace their search engine (assuming that Bing supports AND/OR logic.)  I just can't figure out how a company like MS could have such a poor search engine for supporting their developers. 

    I think the only answer is to use Google or Bing which both seem to support the following - site:social.msdn.microsoft.com "some phrase here" AND download

    And I noticed that Bing has added a dropdown to let me select anytime, 24 hours, past week, and past month.  Past year would be nice, but hey, it's easier than Google (where you can only limit by date when using the advanced option.)

    But neither of those allow me to search just one forum - although it's funny.  Both would allow me to filter by this: site:social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ but if I tried to filter by adding the forum name (site:social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vbgeneral/) they both were unable to find any matches... And yes, if I didn't use the vbgeneral/ and did the search one of the first matches had that as part of the URL.

    Anyway, I guess I am stuck having to use Bing/Google instead....

    me (and yes, I DO mark correct answers)

    Tuesday, April 16, 2013 10:13 PM
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    Right. A few versions of Forum Search have been gone through over the years, including both Bing and SharePoint search. But you need a unique search platform, in order to filter by threads, forums, status, etc. Currently, rather than fixing the existing system, they hope to revamp the system to make it much better. So that's the current strategy. The team will update you when any news is available.

    Thanks!

    Ed Price (a.k.a User Ed), SQL Server Customer Program Manager (Blog, Small Basic, Wiki Ninjas, Wiki)

    Answer an interesting question? Create a wiki article about it!

    Wednesday, April 17, 2013 1:48 AM
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    Ed,

    Given the resources of MS and their desire to support developers (especially with topics relevant to Win 8, etc.) it would be to their best advantage to provide a search that can be forum specific as well as version specific.  But I guess that they don't see it that way, why, I don't know or understand.

    Anyway, the way I have found around this frustrating issue is to save the following bookmark and use it to search:

    http://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Asocial.msdn.microsoft.com%2FForums%2Fen-US&qs=n&form=QBRE&pq=site%3Asocial.msdn.microsoft.com%2Fforums%2Fen-us&sc=0-0&sp=-1&sk=

    I use Bing because I like the day, week, month filter (although I really wish they had year as well.....)  But you could do a similar search in Google and save that. 

    Anyway, when I click on the link, all I need to do is add the stuff I am looking for.  It's funny, both allow me to specify the forums/en-US as part of the site, but neither allow me to include a specific forum - I guess that's because of the way MS exposes the forum info.

    Anyway, I hope this helps those of you following this thread - at least until MS decides that adequately supporting the developers who are trying to give people a reason to buy Windows is important enough to fix the search....

     

    me (and yes, I DO mark correct answers)

    • Marked as answer by FletcherJ Thursday, April 18, 2013 5:45 PM
    Thursday, April 18, 2013 5:45 PM
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    In my experience, the search is terrible.  I have tried searching on exact phrases and gotten over 200,000 resuts.  Obviously useless.  So then I ANDed the words together, and got again...187,000 results.  So then I saw that there was a "Search by Topic" checkbox stack on the left.  Only the top one was checked...so I clicked on it and it unchecked the Forum that was selected and reran the search (all by itself).  Only this time I got less than 50 results...BUT the "Search by Topic" was different.  It had rechecked the original topic, but there were no other topics listed.  So it seems like when I unselected the topic, it chose to instead search ONLY in that particular topic.  And yes, the booleans seem to be ignored.  As well as everything else that would make it an actual useful tool.  Maybe it is there for the M$ people to practice coding on from time to time...




    Tuesday, April 16, 2013 6:26 PM
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    Kamin,

    I would have thought they would have use Bing to replace their search engine (assuming that Bing supports AND/OR logic.)  I just can't figure out how a company like MS could have such a poor search engine for supporting their developers. 

    I think the only answer is to use Google or Bing which both seem to support the following - site:social.msdn.microsoft.com "some phrase here" AND download

    And I noticed that Bing has added a dropdown to let me select anytime, 24 hours, past week, and past month.  Past year would be nice, but hey, it's easier than Google (where you can only limit by date when using the advanced option.)

    But neither of those allow me to search just one forum - although it's funny.  Both would allow me to filter by this: site:social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/ but if I tried to filter by adding the forum name (site:social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/vbgeneral/) they both were unable to find any matches... And yes, if I didn't use the vbgeneral/ and did the search one of the first matches had that as part of the URL.

    Anyway, I guess I am stuck having to use Bing/Google instead....

    me (and yes, I DO mark correct answers)

    Tuesday, April 16, 2013 10:13 PM
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    Right. A few versions of Forum Search have been gone through over the years, including both Bing and SharePoint search. But you need a unique search platform, in order to filter by threads, forums, status, etc. Currently, rather than fixing the existing system, they hope to revamp the system to make it much better. So that's the current strategy. The team will update you when any news is available.

    Thanks!

    Ed Price (a.k.a User Ed), SQL Server Customer Program Manager (Blog, Small Basic, Wiki Ninjas, Wiki)

    Answer an interesting question? Create a wiki article about it!

    Wednesday, April 17, 2013 1:48 AM
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    Ed,

    Given the resources of MS and their desire to support developers (especially with topics relevant to Win 8, etc.) it would be to their best advantage to provide a search that can be forum specific as well as version specific.  But I guess that they don't see it that way, why, I don't know or understand.

    Anyway, the way I have found around this frustrating issue is to save the following bookmark and use it to search:

    http://www.bing.com/search?q=site%3Asocial.msdn.microsoft.com%2FForums%2Fen-US&qs=n&form=QBRE&pq=site%3Asocial.msdn.microsoft.com%2Fforums%2Fen-us&sc=0-0&sp=-1&sk=

    I use Bing because I like the day, week, month filter (although I really wish they had year as well.....)  But you could do a similar search in Google and save that. 

    Anyway, when I click on the link, all I need to do is add the stuff I am looking for.  It's funny, both allow me to specify the forums/en-US as part of the site, but neither allow me to include a specific forum - I guess that's because of the way MS exposes the forum info.

    Anyway, I hope this helps those of you following this thread - at least until MS decides that adequately supporting the developers who are trying to give people a reason to buy Windows is important enough to fix the search....

     

    me (and yes, I DO mark correct answers)

    • Marked as answer by FletcherJ Thursday, April 18, 2013 5:45 PM
    Thursday, April 18, 2013 5:45 PM
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    you could do a similar search in Google and save that. 

    both allow me to specify the forums/en-US as part of the site, but neither allow me to include a specific forum - I guess that's because of the way MS exposes the forum info

    It's because they limit the number of levels the site: attribute can handle and because that needs to see them all down to the one that you are really interested in.

    What we really want is something which used to exist in Live Search but was turned off "temporarily" when it was supposedly discovered being used by "data miners" (gasp!).   Google still allows it but doesn't document it any more:  inurl: 

    BTW you can essentially consider AND as implicit.  In fact, Google once told us that if we tried using it.

     
    FYI

     
    Robert Aldwinckle
    ---

    Sunday, April 21, 2013 6:27 PM
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    Robert,

    I know the AND is implicit (as it seems to be in all search tools).  It's the OR (and the ability to group since we all know that the 2 following queries are totally different):

    (age>18 and sex="M") or sex = "F"

    age>18 and (sex="M" or sex = "F")

    And it seems that search engines that do support OR do not always group things the way that some might expect. With Bing, if you have 5 items and then an OR, the ANDed items are grouped (i.e. the way the 1st example is grouped.)

    Anyway, I am anxious to see what happens.

    My other issue is relevancy. Bing supports time periods, but only up to a month.  Given how frequently they rev software, it might be nice to be able to limit results by year (or even better, any date I pick.)

    Take care

    me (and yes, I DO mark correct answers)

    Thursday, May 16, 2013 5:40 PM
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    My other issue is relevancy. Bing supports time periods, but only up to a month.


    It depends on what else you are putting in your query...

    Good grief.  Have they taken it down, so soon?  More problems with "data miners"?

    C.f.

    http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie10-windows_8/bing-time-search-filter/14587aae-4e97-4e52-8c07-b8306fc6ccc3

     

    See if this works

    http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_8-networking/how-do-i-filter-my-search-by-date-on-bing/a0468bb1-bb63-41e5-993a-d00381902c71

    (BING search for
        "Any Time" bing google site:answers.microsoft.com
    )

    <quote author="petr1chor">

    The basic answer is to type &tbs=qdr at the end of a url after searching

    </quote>

    That did something in terms of the number of results but no sign of the UI I was expecting to see.   YMMV.   Perhaps being in Canada is changing what I am given too?

     
    OTOH I have just discovered that Search History has a calendar associated with it.  Who knew?  Thanks for making me find that.  ; )

     
     

    FYI

     
    Robert
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    Thursday, May 16, 2013 9:13 PM
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    Robert,

    The &tbs=qdr  works, but so does picking the timeframe from the drop down.

    My request/plead was to allow me to specify a date period longer than within the last month (which &tbs=qdr  is also limited to from what I can find.)

    Google allows me to specify any date/time I want - but I have to go to the "advanced" mode as there is no command line option to do it.

    And I prefer Bing's approach with the pull down.  I just wish it had a wider range.  And, of course, would show up consistently (it doesn't seem to show up on the search, but if you go to the 2nd page and then back to the first, it shows up...)

    me (and yes, I DO mark correct answers)

    Tuesday, May 21, 2013 5:33 AM
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    The &tbs=qdr  works, but so does picking the timeframe from the drop down.

    So you are still seeing the drop down?   That was my point about locale.   I only saw it once, the day I confirmed it.

    My request/plead was to allow me to specify a date period longer than within the last month (which &tbs=qdr  is also limited to from what I can find.) 

    Tell them?  Where do we find out if there was any feedback for the idea?  The only feedback mechanisms I see are social media tools that I don't use.

    http://www.bing.com/blogs/site_blogs/b/search/archive/2013/03/27/what-a-difference-a-day-makes.aspx

     
    Robert
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    Tuesday, May 21, 2013 4:55 PM
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