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Eben Stone

Staff member
Are their any secret chars or commands that can be added to the search text to indicate such things as:

  • Exact phrase
  • Results must contain all specified words
  • Results may contain any of the specified words
  • Omit results containing some specific word
For example:

Let's say I want to search for 'Wet Shaving Products" as a phrase, also only include results that contain "vegan" or "rustic", also exclude results that may contain "tallow" or "formula t".

Maybe something like:

+"Wet Shaving Products" and (vegan or rustic) -tallow -"formula t"

I admit that above example is a bit rediculous, but I intentionally made it overly complex to show what can easily be done in a typical web search using Google, etc.

Not asking for SQL language searches. But if there are any hints that can be shared to help I think that would be very useful. Especially exact phrase, because currently if the phrase I want to search for contains "a" or "the" the results are all over the place.

Thanks.
 

luvmysuper

My elbows leak
Staff member
Typing a minus does remove the term that follows from search results.
A partial field will return results with that partial in it - ie, sand will return results including sandman.
Quotations do return exactly what is in the quotation marks.
Or is treated the same as if you were searching for "or"
 

Eben Stone

Staff member
Quotations do return exactly what is in the quotation marks.
That does not seem to be working properly for me, but it's entirely possible I'm doing something wrong. I'll test it more to confirm. Thanks.

Edit: it's definitely broken for some specific phrases, not sure why. I'll try to narrow it down.
 
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Eben Stone

Staff member
Quotations do return exactly what is in the quotation marks.
AFAICT this seems to work if all the words of the phrase are 3 letters or more. If any are 2 letters or less the results are unexpected.

I tested with some useless phrases to confirm.

Works as expected:

"like any BBS"

Doesn't work:

"like an BBS"
"like a BBS"

This is not a complaint or a request to have something fixed. Just mentioning what I have discovered. This explains why it was rarely working for me.
 

Eben Stone

Staff member
Ok I need more assistance.

I want to search for posts containing the exact phrase "Gentlemen's Tonic" so I enter exactly that, including the quotes, into the search box.

The results are the same as if searching for just tonic.

I'm assuming the apostrophe is the culprit. I tried without it and that didn't improve anything.

Any suggestions?
 
As an additional way to search, you can also use a (not to be named) search engine and type the search phrase followed by site:badgerandblade.com, as in:

Code:
henson vs winning razor site:badgerandblade.com
 

Eben Stone

Staff member
As an additional way to search, you can also use a (not to be named) search engine and type the search phrase followed by site:badgerandblade.com, as in:

Code:
henson vs winning razor site:badgerandblade.com
Thanks, that seemed to work, but it's not very convenient. There's got to be some way to accomplish what I'm attempting to do with the built in search, i just haven't been able to figure it out
 
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Eben Stone

Staff member
You will match on any posts that contain the substring "gentlemen" and also contain the substring "tonic".
Yeah, I haven't been able to get the exact phrase working with words that contain apostrophes. So far that's the best I can come up with.
 
The apostrophe is definitely part of the issue. If you search for "Gentelemen tonic" (Not the removal of the S and apostrophe), it will expand your search to also include "Gentelemen's tonic" automatically. Not a fix, but closer.
 
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