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I don't know about anyone else, but sometimes I find the forum search function doesn't always turn up the results you want.

It occurred to me today to use Google to search the forum.

If you type "site:forums.lr4x4.com" followed by your keywords into Google, then it will only return hits from that site.

For example, with the keywords "Battery charger" site:forums.lr4x4.com battery charger which returned the thread I was looking for as the first hit. The same keywords into the forum's search engine produces a nearly incomprehensible list.

Of course this is a function of Google, so won't return new threads until Google's spiders have had their wicked way...

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I was just wondering... does anyone know why you have to use a word with 4 or more letters or the search doesn't work????

I know this can be set to whatever by the powers at be, but it seems a common occurrence on pretty much all forums. It it a default setting or it it to stop rubbish results???

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Guest diesel_jim

And it can be quite annoying when you're looking for such things as:

ABS brakes

ARB lockers

LHD something

RHD or other

BFG tyres

QT suspension bits

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The limitation is given by MySQL, the database management software package behind the forum software. The default setting in MySQL is that the word should have at least 4 characters, the porpoise of this limitation being system overload protection (like when someone searches for something and the other users start complaining about forum not working or working very slow).

This limit can be dropped to 3 letter words by the sys admin (not forum admin - from system privileges p.o.v) if he considers the hardware is powerful enough or the database is small enough.

For 3 letter words or combination use google as in 1st post of the thread. It's much faster anyway.

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The issue and the 'trick' were discussed a number of times on this forum.

http://forums.lr4x4.com/index.php?showtopic=30090

http://forums.lr4x4.com/index.php?showtopic=27994

.....

Given the St. Nicholas Day here's another trick:

If you want to limit a google search (say for "Td5 EGR valve") to a certain section of the forum (say Defender area) use this:

Td5 EGR valve +"Vehicles > Defender" site:lr4x4.com

in a google search field.

The trick is based on including in the search field of something unique to the threads of a specific section. This "something" is taken from address on top of the page, before

the 1st post of the thread. To avoid 'false readings' you need to include more than just 'Defender' or more than 'International' and for that you need to make use of the syntax.

post-1725-1228564302_thumb.jpg

Other examples (xxx= what you want to search for):

Discovery area: xxx +"Vehicles > Discovery" site:lr4x4.com

Freelander area: xxx +"Vehicles > Freelander" site:lr4x4.com

International area: xxx +"Lounge > International" site:lr4x4.com

etc

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Just as a note, has this behaviour been changed?

Noticed just today that I could search for 3 letter words...

"Washer jet" worked fine, well, it searched yet the information I got back was a bit... "much"

Used the Google "trick" and found what I wanted :)

Cheers

Matt

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Jet on it's own returns no results, "washer jet" will probably be searched as a phrase

*Edit*

Just checked and it ignores the "jet" word. Try searching for ibex jet, it will return todays ibex post which has no reference to jet in it. Then try searching for jdklsjdklsjf jet and it returns no results proving that it's not searching for jet at all

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No, nothing's changed.

If you searched for "Washer jet" (including the quotes) then you searched for a single word, 10 characters long (the space counts and is treated as a character). In other words you searched for an expression that is taken as a single word.

If you searched for Washer jet (without quotes) then the system will search for each word in the array except 3 character or less words (in this case will search for Washer), won't report an error because it has something to work with (at least one valid word). On the other hand, the results will have 3 or less character words highlighted because this is done by the forum software, not MySQL search engine.

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