Improved Search Engine?
 

Have people noticed this? It seems a lot faster too.

YES. Yea, fodors!

Glad to see the improvement.

((I))

I agree with the improved speed.

Not every "black hole" is fixed yet... in particular the well-known "Basilicata" thread - - http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...mp;tid=1300139 (perenially championed, and topped... by cmt) STILL can not be retrieved by searching "Basilicata".

Still, each "fix" deserves applause, even if incomplete.

Best wishes,

Rex

I'm not a computer scientist, but a search engine can't be expected to return everything, presumably?

I guess a later thread where cmt pasted the contents of the earlier thread does come up in the search.

<<...a search engine can't be expected to return everything, presumably?>>

It can, in a finite database such as this one. The "black hole" (my own terminology... obviously not "technical jargon") is a glitch of some sort; I don't know how much it has to do with something that Fodors can't find and fix... and how much they are not aware of it.

"It can, in a finite database such as this one."

As I said, I'm not a computer scientist, but that statement doesn't say much -- the Web itself is, after all, also finite.

Surely there must be a size limitation.

I obviously don't know anything about database infrastructure to know.

But I'll take your word that it's a glitch that affects that thread for some reason.

Given that Google can find said Basilicata thread in <1sec indicates that a good search engine can, in fact, find things.

on Google, just use the syntax "Basilicata site:fodors.com"

<<that statement doesn't say much -- the Web itself is, after all, also finite...>>

You're right. "finite" was a poor word choice. What I meant to say was closer to "defined" or "known", with regard to the size of the database, as opposed to more "open-ended", which is what Google has to deal with...

In any event, the Basilicata thread has (apparently) been part of an identifiable "cohort" of data elements here on Fodors for a long time that are "lost" to the indexing process.