Search feature hardly ever works?

[smith_xt]

Why on earth can't this be fixed? Is it a problem with the software design being used?

Just seems awful odd that on a rare occasion it is does work but thats not very often.

[djwixx]

Do you have example searches and example resutls?

You need to bear in mind that the search is based on what people enter when they load pictures. If I have a picture of a Butterfly but call it Colourful you need to know to search on colourful.

Persoanlly I'd say the search works within the scope of what it's searching.

[smith_xt]

Simple phrases like Glacier National Park for example. Darn near every time it'll bring up some error relating to the search yet at other times, which can be rare it'll actually find quite a few results.

This has gone on for a while now.

[djwixx]

I just did the same search and got,
glacier national park Galleries Search Results 1 to 10 of 170
glacier national park Pictures Search Results 1 to 10 of 1228

What error do you get?

[jamesday]

I seem to have a similar problem. uploaded a new gallery yesterday called 'St Kilda 2007' and it does not show up in any searches at all.

[dang]

James, it's not instantaneous. You'll need to give it several days for the system to pick it up.

[djwixx]

This is what the help pages say about the search feature,


The Search Page is used to search the PBase database for images of paid users
The search looks at an image's title, description, location, and keywords.
There are a few reasons why your images may not be showing up on the search:
It may take a few days after paying for your photos to show up on the search.
Only galleries with four or more images will show up on the search.
If you have your images in your root gallery, they will not show up on the search.

My recent galleries appear in the search but looking for individual pictures based on titles does not show anything for the last week or so, further back and they do appear. My guess is that it's a timing issue.

[merriwolf]

Simple phrases like Glacier National Park for example. Darn near every time it'll bring up some error relating to the search yet at other times, which can be rare it'll actually find quite a few results.

This has gone on for a while now.

The 'Search' function on PBase, when it does work, has one bizarre anomaly that seems consistent - it works with one word being entered (apparently called a 'token'), it fails with two words (tokens), works with three words (tokens), alters the search with four words (tokens) entered to fit its apparent limit of a three token entry.

Here are the results I just got for variations of 'glacier national park montana'...

With one word entered...
'glacier' Results 1 to 10 of 416

With two words entered...
Select Failed L258
Your search - glacier national - found no photos.

With three words entered...
'glacier national park' Results 1 to 10 of 171

With four words entered...
Currently the search is limited to three tokens. Modifying query.
'glacier national park montana' Results 1 to 10 of 25

I still try PBase's Search function first, because it is useful seeing the thumbnails, but if it doesn't give me what I'm looking for, I have found Google's site search to be excellent and also allows for much more focused searches.

If you are not familiar with this function of Google it simply requires the term you are searching for plus 'site:' (without the quotes) in front of the URL of the site you want to search.

For instance, to find photos of the Grand Canyon, doing a 'Grand Canyon' search with PBase's Search will fail since it's two words, but with Google and using this entry...

grand canyon site:www.pbase.com

...it returned 20,000 hits, which is awesome but overwhelming, However, it is simple to narrow the search. For instance, to find my photos of the Grand Canyon, one simply enters this...

grand canyon site:www.pbase.com/merriwolf

...which returns 23 hits.

Using Google’s site search feature is extremely useful for narrow searches like that, but it loses a lot of usefulness since it doesn’t show thumbnails.

At least, not that I know how to do. If there’s a way to get Google to show them, I’d love to know how that’s done.

Hope the above is helpful and maybe someday PBase will figure out how to get their search function to work with a two word entry, but I'm not holding my breath for it.

Regards,
Gordon W

[alangrant]

Using Google’s site search feature is extremely useful for narrow searches like that, but it loses a lot of usefulness since it doesn’t show thumbnails.

At least, not that I know how to do. If there’s a way to get Google to show them, I’d love to know how that’s done.

In theory this is supposed to be what Google Images is for - http://images.google.com/

For example, searching for
"grand canyon" site:www.pbase.com
on Google Images does produce some thumbnails of Grand Canyon pictures (these thumbnails are generated by Google, nothing to do with PBase thumbnails).

But a closer look at these results shows some problems. First, there are quite a lot of irrelevant results (page 1 has a picture of a church in Greece and a shot of two cameras). Secondly, it doesn't seem to pick up normal PBase image pages; all the links seem to relate to photos embedded in other pages, e.g. in forums. Thirdly, many PBase pages don't seem to be indexed at all. As you have already said, you can use the ordinary Google search on your own galleries to find Grand Canyon pictures, but the same search on Google Images returns no results.

I don't know if this is a PBase problem (not doing something that is required for pages to be indexed by Google Images) or a Google problem (for some reason not recognising images stored on PBase).

Another example: in addition to my PBase pages I run a small website. It is mainly text-based and all the photos are very small, 180 pixels wide at the most. The same photos are available in larger sizes on my PBase pages. So for someone specifically searching for an image, my PBase galleries would be more relevant. But I have found that Google Images very accurately indexes all the images on my website, but doesn't seem to know about the ones on PBase. This is despite the fact that I generally include quite descriptive titles and captions with my PBase pictures.

[merriwolf]

Using Google’s site search feature is extremely useful for narrow searches like that, but it loses a lot of usefulness since it doesn’t show thumbnails.

At least, not that I know how to do. If there’s a way to get Google to show them, I’d love to know how that’s done.

In theory this is supposed to be what Google Images is for -

But a closer look at these results shows some problems.

I don't know if this is a PBase problem (not doing something that is required for pages to be indexed by Google Images) or a Google problem (for some reason not recognising images stored on PBase).

Yes, it's a pity Google Images doesn't work better with PBase. Would be a great solution to this problem.

As would PBase getting their own search to work properly with a two term (token) entry. It works with one term and three terms. How difficult could it be to get it to work with two? Most puzzling.

[ladytanya]

Query for search: winter lilies
Result:
1st

Code: Select all

Select Failed L258
Your search - winter lilies - found no photos.


2nd

Code: Select all

Your search - winter lilies - found no photos.


and see this:
http://www.pbase.com/image/81391350

[andrys]

Query for search: winter lilies

You're right, of course.
winter lilies
or
"winter lilies"
should work but neither does.

However, as I suspected with this strange search routine,
the following does work:
lilies winter

Maybe that might give pbase an indication of why the
others don't work.

CHRIS? BRIAN? MOLLY? KATHY? Could you please bring
this to the attention of Emily & Slug? Thanks.

[alangrant]

I have beein doing some searching today and noticed that the search engine seems to be on its best behaviour. "Glacier national" and "winter lilies" both work fine. The infamous "bora bora" doesn't, but I think that must be a specific problem relating to a repeated word.

A fix? Or just a random lucky streak?

[andrys]

I have beein doing some searching today and noticed that the search engine seems to be on its best behaviour. "Glacier national" and "winter lilies" both work fine. The infamous "bora bora" doesn't, but I think that must be a specific problem relating to a repeated word.

A fix? Or just a random lucky streak?

Alan, it's almost surely a fix. Glad they seem to have found out what caused
that one.

Thanks for pointing this out !

[alangrant]

I actually noticed it because I was looking at all the fantastic data from the new implementation of Statcounter. I noticed a lot of people arriving on my pages with two-word PBase searches.

Another thing I have learned, now that Statcounter tracks individual image pages, is that PBase Search is used a lot more than I would have guessed. I had more or less given up on it myself due to the persistent problems, but it seems to be still popular (and therefore worth fixing/improving).