Signatures part of searches

[Metar]

While trying to search for the source of a rather amusing quote, I did like I always do - using Search, I closed it down to posts by the quotee, and added the almost-full quote.

The result was, suprisingly, a million and a half threads. Turns out the search function covers signatures as well...


Is there any chance to shut those out of the search-function?

 

[JosX]

I think it's because the new search is powered by google, I don't like it as much.

 

[Metar]

Previous one did it, as well - that's not the problem.

 

[JosX]

Did it? I'm pretty sure the original vB search didn't.

 

[Matt R]

I thought before you could search through the forum or opt to search through the forum using Google?

 

[Metar]

And both searches included signatures when I used them. I simply raised the question now instead of a month ago, because I wasn't sick and with lots of free time on my hands back then.

 

[daan]

I've just searched for the word "vexed" which appears in your sig, and got 61 results. You've made more than 61 posts.

Try it with "Abraham Lincoln" too and you get a few results, but no where near every post of mine.

 

[Sage]

Yeah, the vB search has never ever searched within sigs. Do a search for “ZunguriF1” using the vB search – you’ll only find four results, and all of the results have that word highlighted within the post.

Getting the Google search to do that would only be possible if one can specify conditional comments for things to avoid indexing, such as not indexing anything between <!-- sig --> <!-- / sig --> tags.

 

[Metar]

I am also pretty sure Loon's "Bow down I shall. Still, Indigo text I will use." didn't appear in 85 threads... Nor did Pupik's reply to Famine regarding a Foetus' rights and imprisonment.

It's odd. Sometimes searching, with the precise name of the poster, or the full phrase said, finds me nothing, while sometimes, a single unique word without anything else finds me the very post I was looking for (such as the ZunguriF1 example or Famine's point regarding a meeting of Atom-owners).

 

[Sage]

Oh, that&#8217;s a completely different issue altogether and has nothing to do with sigs. For some reason, vB dropped boolean support in like version 3; when you search, the implicit operator is &#8220;OR&#8221;, not &#8220;AND&#8221; like you&#8217;re used to when using Google.

In other words, when you search for the phrase Bow down I shall, the vB software is looking for any post that has down OR shall (it won&#8217;t find Bow or I, because they both have fewer than 4 letters).

 

[Metar]

That explains it then. I'll use my newfound ability to lock my own threads, then...