Searching really needs an overhaul

[orondf]

1. There are ZERO controls when using the search function. For starters, I can't specify which area of the site to search. Other "advanced" controls that would be nice are changing the sorting of the results (ex. recent instead of relevant, descending/ascending), as well as filtering by categories or tags. The filters on the forums come to mind.

2. There is no way to search in a specific forum. Pretty much any good forum software has the option to search the current forum in the top right. (Also, the existing option to search the forums is placed in an unintuitive location - if I am already in the forums then I shouldn't have to use the main menu to search the forums)

3. TL;DR: Please let me see a list of all the articles for a specific tag rather than having an arbitrary limit. Also, please redirect to a search (using features from #1) instead of the archive.
Long version:
Looking at the articles for a specific tag, when I click "Next" on the last page it takes me to the TechSpot News Archive. From my testing, it appears there is an arbitrary limit on the number of pages of results displayed (ex. The last article on the 9th page of "Microsoft" is from 2019-02-07 while the last article on the 5th page of "Windows 10" is from 2018-02-12 and is also tagged under "Microsoft". For both cases the next button takes me to the archive).
I assume that articles from before a certain date are not tagged, hence the need to redirect to the archive. Therefore, I suggest not only removing this arbitrary limit, but also redirecting to somewhere more relevant than the home page of the archive, such as a custom search for the tag name. (If you still want to show the archive page rather than a search, maybe pass the tag name in the query string so you can give an option to [custom] search for it)

Just my 2 cents trying to look at older articles on a specific topic...

 

[Julio Franco]

Thanks for the feedback. I feel like I've answered this before and it's probably because our search (and we have a few versions of search) is meant to be seamless and "just work" but will not have all the possible options you want at all times.

How TechSpot search works:
1) General purpose search (available in all pages, black button on top bar): leverages Google's search index of TechSpot which gives accurate contextual results. You can use non exact queries and Google will interpret and show the most relevant results.
2) Forum search - uses our local index, searches at the forum level only and has all the built-in filters as provided by our forum software
3) Product Finder search (available in the section home) - uses our local index, searches only products for exact queries
2) Downloads search (available in the section home) - uses Google index, but limits the search to software downloads and drivers, by design

In the same order...

#1: We decided a long time ago (based on actual results) that Google search worked better than anything we could develop in-house and it's maintenance free, so that's our main resource. This in addition to the previously detailed specific search engines, provide good coverage in our opinion.

#2: Yes, you can. In the main menu: Forums > Search Forums:

Search threads

www.techspot.com

#3: This is by design. And brings a good point actually.
In addition to the different search options, we also have the archive and tag-based search. But we limit this to the last ~100 stories for each tag, and that's by design. We've found that leaving that open to unlimited could be seriously abused by bots.

I understand this is not the response you want, but we do have many resources and I'd dare to say we have 99% of user's regular search/discovery needs covered.

 

[DelJo63]

Using Google Search on any site

the general case is:

• site.domain: search inquiry

example for TS

• techspot.com: ring doorbell

 

[orondf]

Thanks for the response, @Julio Franco !
Didn't notice the other tab in the forum search. I still think the option should be more accessible when you are in the forums, but that's a minor detail to anyone who isn't new to the site.
As for the points about Google Search, it is possible to have some controls for filtering and sorting via the API, described here. Most aren't relevant, but the one of note is sorting by date. But in that case I could just as well use Google Search directly because as @jobeard stated the queries are nothing too special. Thinking about it now, you are correct that 99% of users will not care.