Sorting options for the search results on SOTT?

ScarletBegonias

Dagobah Resident
When I search for articles on SOTT I have difficulties finding certain ones sometimes. Maybe there could be a sorting option added to the search results? Perhaps the results could be offered in categories like, "relevance," "popularity," "most recent first" and/or other options. I'm not sure if others would agree, so it's just a thought. :)
 
Hi Scarlet,

AFAIK from doing searches on SOTT, the search engine already has built in priorities for "most recent first" and "relevance".

The real problem with searches IMO lies in finding or constructing the search terms with the highest probability of narrowing down the results into the desired direction.

I'm not really good at this but I have noticed that practicing slight variations in clusters of several search terms combined is likely to yield the best usable results in most instances. fwiw.
 
The search function on this forum can be hard to use at times and doesn't always give the best results, depending on what you search for.

You can try using google to search cassiopaea, as they have much better algorithms than the built in search function of this forum. Just go go to google and type

Code:
 site:cassiopaea.org "query"
 
You can read about the SOTT search options at this link.

For both SOTT and this forum, searching is necessarily somewhat limited. Search engines like Google have massive storage and processing power, and we don't. Plus, search functions are a very good way for evil people to conduct denial of service attacks against our sites, so unfortunately we have to compromise.

When I can't find something, I use the

site:www.sott.net "query"

trick on Google.

On the forum, you can use the pull-down menu option and select Google before clicking the Search button, which gives you a Google site search instead. Might not be a bad idea to add that little feature to SOTT!
 
Thanks for adding the google feature to sott, Scott :flowers:. And now I found finally an article I knew existed but couldn't find with the sott search engine. :rockon:
 
Thanks for the helpful responses, everyone!

Gawan said:
Thanks for adding the google feature to sott, Scott :flowers:. And now I found finally an article I knew existed but couldn't find with the sott search engine. :rockon:

Yes, thanks for this, Mr. Scott! Wow, it made it a lot easier for me to find articles! :D
 
Just keep in mind that the SOTT search function works like so:

If you search for just:

lightning

it will give you results based on the number of times that search term appears in an article. Thus, newer articles will not necessarily be listed first.

If you search for:

intitle: lightning

then it will give you all the articles with "lightning" in the title, ordered by most recent to oldest.

The idea was to make it so that normal readers who come along can find the best stuff first, without having to use the fancier search options.

Or, just use the Google search option, and you'll always find what you're looking for!
 
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