I have read the other search problem posts, but I still don't understand why my searches are getting the weird resutls they do.

My example. I am searching for issues with BENQ 8700 Projector and the XBox 360 VGA adapter cable. Seems easy enough, but I just seem to get almost random results (usually about 10-12 pages of them).

Tried in many orders and combinations, but gave up in the end and just had to post a new threads.

+8700 +360+ VGA - Results 33 pages. First 3 posts were mine, and then the others didn't contain all the search words.

Using +8700, +XBOX, +360, +BENQ, +VGA, +CABLE I get tons of results, but most of them don't have ALL the search words, which is what I thought "+" was supposed to do?

I can understand getting fewer results because of the step by step search process, and limited results for each step, but I get TOO MANY results every time.

Any help gratefully appreciated.

Sorry to say that the search is done word by word and seeing the words you are using are used A LOT on the site, you will have the issue you are running into.

You can try using full text search by putting things in " " like "BENQ 8700" "Xbox Cable"

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the quick response, but I still don't understand What happened.

It now seems to work properly again. weird.

Guess it could be some browser/ISP cacheing problem, cookies or even a blip on the search engine. Will see if it comes back again.

New user who is also having major issues with search! I tried to do an advanced search on topics only for KD-27FS210 in the Direct View forum...it found all kinds of results, and some that have NO usage of this term anywhere (topic or text) that I can see in the entire thread...so I had to page thru hundreds of old threads just trying to locate threads that I want to see...any ideas?

The issue is the - in it for it can be used as a THIS not NOT THIS type thing.

Try using 27FS210 and make sure you select to SHOW RESULTS AS POSTS and then if you click the post and not the thread title in the return, you will be taken to the post that has the match.

Hops this may help. The search in this software is not really the best, that is for sure. It has it major limits.

:o I didn't realize that "-" had special meaning for search! Given how often it's used in model nbrs, using it as part of string seems SO normal!
And I also found later that I had somehow mixed two model nbrs together so I'd not found what I was looking for anyway, but it was the results that had NO matches to my string that really puzzled me...
Would adding the quotes around a string with hypen make a difference?

If you use quote is is then searching for full text contained within the quotes. Usually used for phrases.