Please remove minimum character threshold for searches

[drewski24]

Apologies in advance if this has already been mentioned by other members. 

 

Currently it seems there is a minimum threshold of 4 characters for valid search terms capable of generating search results.  Failure to meet this character limit criteria in a search will automatically return the following message, "There were no results for your search. Try broadening your criteria or choosing a different content area." 

 

This is a weakness of the search engine, as it can be incorrect and misleading.  For example, if I search the term "SM8" (or any other standalone term <4 characters in length) in the classifieds/for sale forum, the WRX search engine will return zero results despite there being multiple active listings for SM8 wedges.  This is because the search engine seemingly does not recognize a search term as valid unless the term entered is equal to or greater than 4 characters in length (even if the search term is placed in quotes).  This greatly limits the search engine, especially considering the nature of equipment naming schemes in the golf industry (TS3, SM8, RTX, M2, 818, PXG, RBZ, etc, etc, etc).  I recommend modifying the search engine character limit such that any standalone search term greater than or equal to 2 characters in length is accepted as valid and capable of returning search results.  This will make for more efficient search capabilities, particularly in the classifieds/for sale forum.

 

[Gxgolfer]

This is currently not configurable and we are completely redoing search. 

[nsxguy]

11 hours ago, drewski24 said:

Apologies in advance if this has already been mentioned by other members. 

 

Currently it seems there is a minimum threshold of 4 characters for valid search terms capable of generating search results.  Failure to meet this character limit criteria in a search will automatically return the following message, "There were no results for your search. Try broadening your criteria or choosing a different content area." 

 

This is a weakness of the search engine, as it can be incorrect and misleading.  For example, if I search the term "SM8" (or any other standalone term <4 characters in length) in the classifieds/for sale forum, the WRX search engine will return zero results despite there being multiple active listings for SM8 wedges.  This is because the search engine seemingly does not recognize a search term as valid unless the term entered is equal to or greater than 4 characters in length (even if the search term is placed in quotes).  This greatly limits the search engine, especially considering the nature of equipment naming schemes in the golf industry (TS3, SM8, RTX, M2, 818, PXG, RBZ, etc, etc, etc).  I recommend modifying the search engine character limit such that any standalone search term greater than or equal to 2 characters in length is accepted as valid and capable of returning search results.  This will make for more efficient search capabilities, particularly in the classifieds/for sale forum.

 

 

I asked about this many years ago on another board and here's how it was explained to me.

 

Take, for instance the letter "e". It appears almost 300 times on this page before my post.

 

I am no search expert but I do know that the computer creates indices of the search criteria. So, if searching only for the letter "e" it would have built almost 300 indices. Now if it searched the whole board ? Yikes.

 

Now of course nobody is going to search for the letter "e". How about "ed" ? Ahhhhhh, only 14 instances. That's much better. But we're still talking about 1 page with 1 post. Care to guess how many on the entire board ? Me neither. ?

 

And so on. But it doesn't take an M.I.T. grad to see/imagine the implications of building so many indices and then sorting same, yes ? Takes an awful lot of computing power.

 

So someone, somewhere, somehow, determined to cap the search words to 4 or more letters.

 

Now I understand that SM8, PXG, etc. are not common combinations and, if "they" cared to, before searching for anything, eliminate any common 3 letter words like "the", "are", "and", etc and only take unrecognized/"specialty" 3 letter terms,,,,,,,,,,,,, but it seems nobody is inclined to do so.