Suggestion - Search

[tushR]

The site looks cool, too polished for a freeware site...
One suggestion - if you have some funds to spare.. I would request you to improve the search feature in the site, its not at par with other things in this site .

[George]

Hi tushR,
thanks for the good words...
What exactly do you have in mind in regards to addl. search features?

[tushR]

I am not a tech. in this, in layman terms most of the times I know that a particular article / product review is there in the site but couldn't find it using search...it's not that search is not working its just not very accurate...

[George]

The search engine we provide comes with the CMS we use. It searches all our articles for any of the keywords you want. It is working well in my eyes. I was always able to find what I was looking for.

On the search result page, you can also expand the 'Advanced Search' options to get more settings for your particular search.

[Ritho]

I can usually find what I am looking for too, but then again I know my way around the site quite well.

Someday we hope to have a "freeware wizard" that will more or less take the place of the search feature, but we need someone who knows how to create the scripting to make it work and even then it will take some time. This is something to look forward to at least.

Your perspective on the search feature may be of great value to us as we continue to develop the wizard. So if I may ask, give us as many details as you can about your experence with it. e.g. What specific software or article were you looking for, and what search terms did you use to try to find it? This type of information helps us understand how best to cater to the needs of our users, and to see things from their perspective.

[Sope]

I occasionally get frustrated by Gizmo's search too.

For example, today, ironically, I was looking for the search program "Everything".

Typing the word "everything" in the search box got me nowhere near.

I then cheated having worked out that the article title was "best free desktop search utility"
Entering this phrase in the search box again got me nowhere near!

Next, by searching for the phrase, including quote marks, the exact article did appear though only at fourth in the list.

Incidentally, a Google search of the same phrase (without quotes) found the article and offered it as first suggestion!

I guess it would help if I brushed up on my search techniques but as most people are used to Google I suspect many users of Gizmo's search box may not easily find what they're looking for.

(This is just an observation really as it sounds like the site may be stuck with the search engine it comes with.)


Edit: I of course initially forgot that the "advanced search options" feature is there so maybe it's just me getting lazy!