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February 18, 2009
Brownstoner Search..............
Is it me or is the brownstoner search capability just hit or miss.
Example: I am looking for an attorney. I find a reference regarding david fainkich.
I search for him ( david fainkich,'david fainkich',"david fainkich",fainkich) to find out if there are any other references to him. Not one comes up, not even the one I found originally . I google him and two links to bstoner come back.
You have a mountain of data that is really useful, but when I search for stuff that I know is there, it doesn’t come up, which gives me the impression that the results I get for other stuff is incomplete...
brownie, you need one of these.
http://www.googlestore.com/appliance/product.asp?catid=3
Ive set one up before. Takes 45mins.
Well worth the 3k.
Comments
He's my attorney....
David Fainkich
david@dfainkich.com
718-840-5860
Posted by: daveinbedstuy at February 18, 2009 4:29 PM
I agree; searching the site is hell. I had chosen a sidewalk contractor 18 months ago by looking through all the forum archives that came up with a search for "sidewalk" and then, just recently, to retrieve the contractor's phone number, plugged in his name together with "sidewalk" and got zero results. So I had to go back to plowing through the archives.
Posted by: johnife at February 18, 2009 4:36 PM
Agreed. Until B'stoner gets a chance to fix it, I've found that the same search, directly on google, will point me to the right page on brownstoner.
If it doesn't work right off the bat, do "your search" and then throw in 'brownstoner' into the google search line and that has always led me to the page I know is out there but can't find directly through B'stoner's search function.
Posted by: jcarch at February 18, 2009 5:10 PM
I never use the search engine on this site . I perform a Google Advanced Aearch. I enter my search terms in the "all these words:" field, and type www.brownstoner.com in the "Search within a site or domain:" field. Works like a charm...
Posted by: pwhite at February 19, 2009 11:30 AM
yeh i'm really surprised brownstoner hasn't implemented a better forum system.
lets face it something liek this was ok in the 90's but now it's crap.
having an email verification system that actually works and advanced search and rss feeds for tags is considered a minimum these days.
if you cant do it then feel free to get one of us readers to manage the site.
Cheers,
Dean
Posted by: deancollins at February 19, 2009 6:19 PM
Right, the original poster is missing the point of what the Google Search Appliance is. That device is designed for companies to index and search their own internal documents and assets behind a firewall, and not for information available on the public internet (i.e. Brownstoner.com).
The Google solution that Mr. B could implement is a Google Custom Search Engine, which is free (as long as you let Google run its own ads on the results pages):
http://www.google.com/coop/cse/
Posted by: josh59x at February 22, 2009 8:41 AM
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