An easier way to search Pelican - Just thought I'd share.

[wrinkledpants]

New owner here, and this place is a gold mine of info, but I hated how long and tedious it was to search with the site. So, I now use google to do it.

Place this string in the browser and hit enter

site:forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/

Now, bookmark this page that comes up. Now, whenever you want to search, click this bookmark and type in whatever you want to search in the Google search box that pops up with the site info already filled in.

Maybe all you intelligent gents are aware of this. Maybe not.

Works well on Safari, at least.

[Canada Kev]

Yep, it works. Just type what you're searching for in front of the above site:forums.pelic... string and leave a space between the last search item and the beginning of site, and you're golden.

[wayner]

Thanks for the tip! That works well.

(Now if only someone could tell me what search terms to use when I can't find something, instead of the typical "search engine is your friend, so stop asking" response).

[wrinkledpants]

Originally Posted by Canada Kev

Yep, it works. Just type what you're searching for in front of the above site:forums.pelic... string and leave a space between the last search item and the beginning of site, and you're golden.

I just have it bookmarked for the actual search site. So, I put in that "site" string into the browser, hit enter, a google search bar pops up with the site info filled in, and this is the page I bookmarked. Now, anytime I want to search, I click on this bookmark, type in what I want to search after the "site" string that is already in the google search bar, and off I go.

[SilberUrS6]

That sure works better than the PP search.

I did a "SSI 3.2" search on Pelican, and got no hits. Did it using Google and got a LOT of hits. Just spent quite a bit of time reading about how to put SSIs in my car.

[notmytarga]

Okay Wayne - looks like the public has spoken. Perhaps it is time to incorporate the Google search into your code. It would save you server effort and us waiting the 10 seconds between mistyped searches. Perhaps there is a reason to maintain the PP search - but Google can provide some robust analytics. The link for the webmaster is the first one to come up with the search term.

[JAR0023]

Count me in as a Google search user. I just type in my search term followed by , 911, pelican. This gets me close enough. Then I scroll through the results and right click "open in new tab".

-J

[Venetian]

I can't understand why the Pelican search function is so poor unless it is me. It seems that only a small percentage of the "search" is relevant to what is requested.

[500_19B]

I am not sophistacted at all in terms of Google usage. This is a great tip! Thanks!!

[megerian]

I concur. The "search this forum" is apt when you have a single word, preferably obscure word, to limit the number of hits. But for anything beyond that, the google search, limited to the pelican site, is far better.

Wayne - the good news here is that all we want to search is your site and your forums :-)

[Wayne 962]

I'll look into it. The trouble is when Google decides to stick ads to my competitors alongside those results - that's not good.

-Wayne

[wrinkledpants]

Originally Posted by Wayne at Pelican Parts

I'll look into it. The trouble is when Google decides to stick ads to my competitors alongside those results - that's not good.

-Wayne

Maybe it's just me, but I would pay more money for a part on your site than a competitor just to support the community. When I use google to search for things, I never even notice what ads pop up as I'm focused on finding something specific. Unless we're talking a big price difference, I'll always buy from here before anywhere else.

Now - If I'm buying a toaster oven, computer software, or some other mundane item - then whatever the lowest price is gets my money.

Porsche built its brand on loyalty, and for me, that extends beyond just the car.

[hbueno]

Originally Posted by wrinkledpants

Place this string in the browser and hit enter

site:forums.pelicanparts.com/porsche-911-technical-forum/



Works well on Safari, at least.

Must be a Safari thing. When I put that string into the URL bar in Firefox, it doesn't understand it.

[megerian]

Works perfectly in the URL bar of Google Chrome

[Jerome74911S]

Originally Posted by hbueno

Must be a Safari thing. When I put that string into the URL bar in Firefox, it doesn't understand it.

Yup. Same problem. It works for me in Safari, but not Firefox.

[hbueno]

Originally Posted by Jerome74911S

Yup. Same problem. It works for me in Safari, but not Firefox.

Doesn't work on iPad Safari either.

[zip465]

Very nice thanks for the tip

[Canada Kev]

I haven't used the search function here for probably years. Google search for me.

[zip465]

In mobile safari just paste the string into the search bar. Then as posted above add your search before site:

[mpetry]

works well in Bing too!

The reason the search engines give "more and better results" is that they have much better algorithms for scoring the content and delivering the relevant pages in response to your query.

Results from the forum internal search bar are ranked by word frequency only, probably a function internal to the database (MySQL ?)