Help - Boolean Searches

[CAM]

Many members seem to be able to easily track down posts on particular topics, sometimes going back years. I don't and fall into the 'Biff' category on this.

I thought Boolean Searches could be done on the site, i.e. you could search for two or more words using either and, +, or brackets.

When I try it, it comes up with any of the words in my search, but not just the posts that have all of them.

For example, as in my previous thread, searching for Tank+Regiment+Sleeve+Badges, every post with any of the words in comes up (even using brackets) but not only those with all (or even fewer) words.

Is there a way of doing this? or do members trawl through all the threads.

Chris

[Rob Miller]

Hi Chris

I use the thread tools function above right, then subscribe to thread to save all my favourite threads to my user CP area so I can often find a relevant thread without having to search the entire forum.

Rob

[Wooffy]

Hi Chris,

This is somewhat more complicated than it should be IMO.

Searching for anything with a + between them will look for those words in a post, but not in any specific order or combination. When searching for a specific set of words, in a specific combination you should put them between double speech marks "" So in your case, you would search for:

"Tank Regiment Sleeve Badges"

However, there is also another way to search which seems to provide slightly different results.

The software driving the forum is vBulletin which is public access to a certain extent. That means that you can go to google and search the forum from there. All you need to do is add the site after the search term. So entering the following into google should, in theory, give you the same outcome from searching within the forum.

"Tank Regiment Sleeve Badges" site:britishbadgeforum.com

However, in searching for your specific term:

"Tank Regiment Sleeve Badges"

Using either search method, I get a nil return. Insofar as I know it is not case sensitive (I have tried a range of searches using upper and lower case letters and get the same return).

As a point of interest, if I search on google for:

"Tank regiment" site:britishbadgeforum.com

It shows me that there are 278 Results

Using "Tank regiment" as a search term and selecting 'all posts' as the control factor in the forum search gives me 485 hits. If I search again for "Tank regiment" but select 'show threads' it gives me 364 hits.

Not sure how much that helps?

[Milmed]

If I need to search the forum I use google... try the following:

site:www.britishbadgeforum.com "keyword" + "keyword1" + etc

Using google this way you are also able to search for 3 character strings that the forum search engine does not allow. ie. "ABC" or "RPC" or "RDF" etc

[CAM]

Thanks for the responses so far - I shall later this evening.

Chris

[Mike]

I did put a google search box on the site:


https://www.britishbadgeforum.com/go...earch-page.htm


The link to that is under the navigation bar (above) is "Other Pages: Galleries, Links etc"....SEARCH

[CAM]

All the suggestions are helpful and will come in handy for future searches.

Wooffy - I tried your method via google and after playing around was unsuccessful re this site but came up with this from the Saleroom, which is one pace forward - many thanks. I will now work on identifying them with dates etc

Selection of Royal Tank Regiment & Armoured Car Crewman’s Sleeve Badges, including early brass example with two lug fittings to the reverse, 2x variations of brass Tank sleeve badges, anodised sleeve badge, brass crewman’s badge with two lug fittings to the reverse and anodised example. Generally all in good condition. (6 items).

[Wmr-RHB]

One of the problems with searching might be that when you search for Royal Tank Regiment, the page you want to see might have RTR instead. No search engine will be able to see that those are the same and thus it will not be found.

And as people are lazy and thus use all sorts of shortenings and/or mnemonics, either general accepted or of their own invention, useful searching will stay a dream

That is particular true for images that are captioned with DC012345,jpg and the like.

[CAM]

Thanks Henk. I tried that too.

Chris

[Wmr-RHB]

Originally Posted by CAM

Thanks Henk. I tried that too.

Chris

Yes, I assumed that already.
But I merely wanted to point to the fact that using search engines is often a frustrating experience. Often due to people not even once in a post mentioning the correct designation of a unit, or the correct name of uniform parts, etc.