Search returning incorrect results.

[#1]

I had though a thread already existed regarding the Search facility, but could not find it (no pun intended), so if this post is relevant then please move if needed.

I've just done an advanced search using the "With the exact phrase" option, in this case "My Friends", the first time I searched I got nothing, but this has already been mentioned elsewhere, but on executing the same search again I got some 300 results, but a lot of them do not contain the exact phrase. For example, when ordered by Date the first 3 entries do contain the exact phrase, as my interpretation of exact phrase, is, I hope is the same as everyone else in that I entered 'My Friends' so I would have expected the search to return results containing 'My Friends' as a contiguous string and not results containing 'My' and or 'Friend'.

If you look at the first thread from the results seen in the image you can see 'my' is highlighted in message 1, but the actual text I was searching for doesn't appear until message 2. This is counter intuitive to how I would expect this to work.

[#2]

I'm glad it's not just me being unable to find post which I know exist, and that I'm not going mad.

I have had to give up trying to find very specific replies, which I needed for helping staff with technical issues.

This search needs to be removed and replaced with an entirely new one which does what it says.

[#3]

The thread that you were thinking of is this one. Despite turning off auto correct, the search will still highlights the individual words used as well as finding other forms of some of the words as mentioned in the other thread - not exactly clever when you search for an "exact phrase"

However you do need to click on the "Show results in replies" in each result box to see the results -

[#4]

No it's not clever at all, and to be honest as I was searching for an exact phrase I would not expect or want to be asked to click on anything as I would expect the correct results to be in front of me. Sure some of the results are correct but the results with the single words highlighted like 'my' and 'friend' are misleading, as a user the first thing that comes in to your (my) head when you see them is that the search does not work.

[#5]

It might be that I need to remove the 'advanced search...' button from the main search bar. Its a just a link I added to get to the search page but it requires input to get to that page which is why you will see the empty query error. Because you need to search for something to get to the advanced search page, the testers felt that a link to the page would be a good idea. In order to do an advanced search you need to have searched for something already though.. thing is.. clicking the advanced search link will not give you a query input already. I have literally just added a link to the search page which seems to be causing issues from a usability point of view.

[#6]

@jaread83 - Can I make another suggestion, at the top of this (and every other) page on this site you have what is in effect a redundant link to 'Community' so can't you add the Search and Advanced Search options there? Later you could add an entry for the FAQ when it's done and also a link to a User Guide as well. As these items are all relevant to 'Community' it would provide context and function.