Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2007-05-11 08:30:37 - Graham Ellis
There's a search box on the top of all our regular pages - put a word in there, submit the form, and you'll be offered a selection of appropriate pages ... and if there's nothing relevant, you'll be offered nearby spellings. Try a search for Ireland and a search for Irelond.
Search for multiple words, and our search box (until 30 minutes ago) would find you the top pages for each of those two words. Word xxxx OR word yyyy. But that's been becoming less than ideal. As our site grows, users who call for multiple words no longer want to be presented with the top pages for each of them - they want priority to be given to pages that match word xxxx AND word yyyy. The new algorithm is in - try deleting cookie or python printf.
But our server has already forgotten the instructions it had until 30 minutes ago, so now it'll work rather better (far from perfect - search algorithms are a law unto themselves) if you try any of the suggestions in this item ... or your own: