Posted By Website Co-ordinator Hi Malcolm, Thanks for your interest. What follows is a bit formal, but that way I can cover your other point and use the content later to update the "Help FAQs". The “Search” facility located in the right hand column of this page is to provide users with a tool to locate either a discussion they can remember and would like to re-read or to locate discussions on a particular topic they are interested in. For this reason, the search results refer to the whole thread in which the item searched for is found. The search is made on all entries in the chosen forum(s), irrespective of whether the threads are displayed on the current pages or have been archived. The search offers the following options: Keyword, Choice of forum or all forums Choice of time length Member name Using the keyword search The way it works: If, for example, you enter the word, road, the result will list all the threads where that word is present. The word may be present anywhere in that thread, either in the title, subtitles, original thread and/ or subsequent responses. If you entered the words, road risk, the result will list all the threads where the words road and / or risk are present. They are each searched for separately and the results combined. Try to be specific: A keyword search should be as the name suggests, based on a key word or words. Generic and general words such as health, safety, risk etc. should be avoided unless you want to retrieve a lot of threads. Avoid words such as, "and, but, not, to", and similar linking words. The more specific the word used the more specific the result and the fewer the threads listed. One way to find more specific words is to do an initial search using your own words, then look at the thread titles in the results and then use the words from the titles to try a more specific search. Consider choosing a shorter time period: If you find that the terms you are using produce too many results, limit your search by choosing a shorter search period. Hope this helps. Enjoy the holiday, Angela Wheatcroft Website Co-ordinator

Posted By Simon Wilkins Angela I'm not sure that the search actually operates as you described. For example, I searched on the following terms, in each case for one year on all forums. "risk" returned 200 threads. "road" returned 145 threads. "road risk" returned 46 threads rather than the expected 200+. However, not all the 46 contained "road" and "risk", so I'm not sure what the actual search clause is. Simon

Posted By Simon Wilkins No problem, Malcolm. Angela, can you provide some clarification please, based on the actual search code? Having done some further testing I believe that putting two words in definitely produces an AND search condition, not an OR as you suggested earlier. However, it is nott a whole word search. Coming back to the previous example of entering "road risk" into the search box produces results containing one of the following terms (at least):- - road AND risk - abroad AND risk - broaden AND risk I think that it is sensible to for the search to return your word with different endings (eg lifting, lifted, lifts as well as lift when lift is entered), but not with other letters in front of it. As far as I can tell the current search is 'Like *word*' whereas 'Like word*' might be better. Anyway, you could help us all by clarifying how the search currently works. TIA Simon