search has limited intelect

[MeJasonT]

I entered cnc
The search engine said too many references
I entered building cnc
Search engine shortened my search and gave me all references to building

Surely there are more building references than cnc references

My head hurts it’s too confusing

[DIYSwede]

Maybe you want to try this as the search engine indeed has limited intellect, and GIGO rules everywhere:
https://www.homemadetools.net/tag/cnc

Searching for "cnc conversion" among the tools (rather than on the forum) you get a mere 379 hits.
The same forum search only gets 19 hits.

2 cents

Johan

[Jon]

Thanks DIYSwede; your point is valid though MeJasonT. There are multiple search engines across the site, and there's a 3-character lower limit for the forum search engine. There are ways around the limitations with advanced search syntax and some tricks, but yes, providing a unified and more complete search engine is on my list.

One trick I can recommend for all websites is to circumvent the site's particular search function by using advanced Google search syntax. For example, play with these queries in Google:

Site-restricted search:
site:homemadetools.net cnc

Site-restricted search plus url restriction:
site:homemadetools.net inurl:forum cnc

Site-restricted search plus url restriction, plus subtracting urls containing "tags" (Google over-indexes these)
site:homemadetools.net inurl:forum -inurl:tags cnc

Note that the inurl: syntax works because our forum pages all contain "forum" in the url. In fact, this is common enough with all forums that you can do this trick:

inurl:forum cnc

You can also play with this custom Google search engine I put together, to search only machining forums: Search 12 machining forums at once

[MeJasonT]

Thanks jon
Really helpful

I tend to use wildcards in google having used databases throughout my career, somtimes being very brave and trying sql commands although im not brilliant with sql. DB5 was more my era.

[Saltfever]

Jon, please consider wild cards ("*"). There is nothing more powerful.