Forum Search Function

[Kaystein]

My apologies if this has been brought up before, but when I use the search function to look for certain references in other players posts I end up with the search going to a white screen, this happens every time whether I'm searching on my phone or desktop PC, any help would be appreciated as I use the search function quite a lot and at the moment its broke, for me at least.

This has happened to me as well. I think it has something to do with either censors put in place or no search results existing.

[Ghost Land]

I personally have been encountering this less recently than in the final months of 2018, though it seemed like a one-word search had a 90% chance of going through, which decreased to 50% for a two-word search and continuing to taper off from there. Oftentimes the searches would be very routine, such as searching for references to a particular user or just a random topic.

There have been a handful of other times when I've been able to do a search, but when I click on a certain page (let's say, page 11 of 12), the white screen shows up. I don't think it's a censorship issue, considering swearing and sexual talk of all sorts shows up uncensored; I think it's just a forum glitch, though I'm not the person to talk to about stuff like that.

[Frisbeeteria]

Total posts 28,981,625 • Total topics 380,656 • Total members 1,218,982

Given those stats, please understand that searching that much content simply takes a lot of time and server resources. It's probably not designed for a forum this size, but it's what we've got to work with.

[Reploid Productions]

What you're searching for also can jam up the works. If your search is for a very common word it can time out your search query because there are a bajillion results to pull up. When you get a white screen, odds are you need to find a way to narrow your search parameters down to be more specific.

[Kaystein]

Can the forum somehow make it's posts and topics a more publicly searchable thing on google?

For example, I'll write a phrase here and make a title, and then I'll try searching for it on google. I'll edit my post and see what the results are.

"Seventeen little cannibal ducks swarming a Max Barry snack."

Phrase result: Link

Most relevant search result I think was this amusing NS dispatch about an ex-nation's ducks : https://www.nationstates.net/page=dispatch/id=716564

No regrets reading that. Lol.

Topic title result: Link

Most relevant result I think was one link to Max Barry's blog: https://maxbarry.com/2006/03/26/news.html

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In all, I think that if the built-in search function of this game can't handle the load of content on it's own anymore, it would be an idea to piggyback from google's more powerful search engine. Of course, complete this at your own convenience administrators. I understand there is higher priorities.

*cough*release season two of NS cards*cough*

[Leutria]

Can the forum somehow make it's posts and topics a more publicly searchable thing on google?

For example, I'll write a phrase here and make a title, and then I'll try searching for it on google. I'll edit my post and see what the results are.

"Seventeen little cannibal ducks swarming a Max Barry snack."

Add this to your search without the quotes: “site:https://forum.nationstates.net/”

That tells google to only bring up pages from that website. Now, it still had to have crawled the page first, and while I think while a lot of the forum likely gets indexed by google, I am not sure how long it would take for the average thread to first be seen.

[Kaystein]

Add this to your search without the quotes: “site:https://forum.nationstates.net/”

That tells google to only bring up pages from that website. Now, it still had to have crawled the page first, and while I think while a lot of the forum likely gets indexed by google, I am not sure how long it would take for the average thread to first be seen.

Updated search result for phrase: Link

The title yielded no search results. Link anyway.

[Leutria]

Try again in a week or two. Google has a lot of internet to crawl