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- Joined
- Mar 23, 2010
- Messages
- 1,405
First -- This thread should probably be in the tech forum, but I'm afraid many PMers would miss it. Mods, if it must be moved, that's ok of course.
As often as members point other members to use the search function, I have yet to see this topic brought up. There could be a better way than what I have found, but hopefully this is beneficial to some people, it has been to me.
PMs search engine (to my knowledge) doesn't have the ability to perform boolean searches. Boolean search logic gives you the tools to construct sophisticated queries that have higher recall (pulls in the most relevant threads/posts in the entire PM database). You may be used to using these logical operators on google (adding quotations, "and", "or", wildcard operators). Without boolean logic, searching forums can be cumbersome.
If you have ever looked for a specific thread or specific info at PM, you may have had the same frustration. For example...
If you are looking for threads with "growth hormone" in the title, you will get roughly 322 hits, but only a portion of those will have the actual phrase. 267 of the hits only have the word "growth", and 99 will only have the word "hormone". The obvious problem being that many of your search hits will likely have nothing to do with "growth hormone".
An easy way around this problem is to copy and paste this site into your browser: https://groups.google.com/advanced_search?q=&
Type "http://www.professionalmuscle.com/forums" into the "Search within a site or domain:" textbox
Now you have the ability to use boolean logic.
If I search for threads with "growth hormone" in the title, I get 82 search results, ALL of which have both words in the title, and are indeed about GH.
You also have all of the general parameters that PM has, such as date filtering. The only downside is that I haven't figured out how to narrow results by the author, and also the search can only distinguish between posts and threads by whether the hit lies in the body or the title.
I'm not a tech guru or anything, I just thought I would share what has helped me a lot. Feel free to PM me with questions.
As often as members point other members to use the search function, I have yet to see this topic brought up. There could be a better way than what I have found, but hopefully this is beneficial to some people, it has been to me.
PMs search engine (to my knowledge) doesn't have the ability to perform boolean searches. Boolean search logic gives you the tools to construct sophisticated queries that have higher recall (pulls in the most relevant threads/posts in the entire PM database). You may be used to using these logical operators on google (adding quotations, "and", "or", wildcard operators). Without boolean logic, searching forums can be cumbersome.
If you have ever looked for a specific thread or specific info at PM, you may have had the same frustration. For example...
If you are looking for threads with "growth hormone" in the title, you will get roughly 322 hits, but only a portion of those will have the actual phrase. 267 of the hits only have the word "growth", and 99 will only have the word "hormone". The obvious problem being that many of your search hits will likely have nothing to do with "growth hormone".
An easy way around this problem is to copy and paste this site into your browser: https://groups.google.com/advanced_search?q=&
Type "http://www.professionalmuscle.com/forums" into the "Search within a site or domain:" textbox
Now you have the ability to use boolean logic.
If I search for threads with "growth hormone" in the title, I get 82 search results, ALL of which have both words in the title, and are indeed about GH.
You also have all of the general parameters that PM has, such as date filtering. The only downside is that I haven't figured out how to narrow results by the author, and also the search can only distinguish between posts and threads by whether the hit lies in the body or the title.
I'm not a tech guru or anything, I just thought I would share what has helped me a lot. Feel free to PM me with questions.
