Search Feature

[shawnkraus]

Can we get the existing search feature to work properly?
I just tried a search for the word "Berlin" and got no results.
Is this something being "worked on"?
It would be nice if it was a bit more reliable.
It seems like sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Am I the only person on Pbase that has issues with the search feature not working all the time?

[alangrant]

You're not the only one. If I'm looking for an image for myself I can usually find what I want by using Google with the "site:www.pbase.com" syntax. But the dodgy search engine creates a very poor impression of the site and must result in people being misled into thinking that what they are looking for is not to be found here (at least with something like Berlin it's obvious something is wrong, but with a more obscure search people would just think there are genuinely no results).

Incidentally I've just run the "berlin" search with the same result as you - i.e. nothing. Searching for "berlin wall", on the other hand, returns over 700 images!

[smith_xt]

No your certainly not alone in the PBase Search feature failure. Seems to be an issue that they just can't get to always work.

Many times it's a failure _

[drr1531]

I agree the search engine is not very good relative to almost any other website I use. You can't even search for a member gallery if you know the member's name, can't search by topic and only bring up a list of galleries, etc. It is basically useless if I want to find if anyone has a gallery of boat images. Do a search on boat and you get a zillion hits on boat images and hundreds of galleries. Essentially useless.

I agree with the prior comment that it reflects poorly on PBase to have such a lame search engine when so many other features of the site are so good.

[akmc_in_au]

I agree the search engine is not very good relative to almost any other website I use. You can't even search for a member gallery if you know the member's name

I agree with everything else that you wrote (especially about the inability to search by topics), but the absence of a user name search is less of a problem. I was a little surprised that you couldn't search by name[1] when I first arrived at PBase, but if you already know the name it's as simple as entering

Code: Select all

http://www.pbase.com/User_Name/

in the address bar.

Of course, there's no provision for wildcard searches if you only know part of the name...

[1] Before anyone mentions it, yes, there is the old user list page (http://www.pbase.com/users). No, it hasn't been updated for over a year which is probably why you won't find a direct link to it on the site any more. And no, it wasn't particularly useful anyway after it reached the point where you needed to scroll through dozens of pages of listings for each letter of the alphabet.