1

If I search Google I will get results: http://www.google.com/search?client=ubuntu&channel=fs&q=SAT+wikihow&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8 However if I search for SAT in wikiHow search, I will get things like “Sit Through Opera” I think this will be a hot topic for students come November, March, and I’d like to see the search feature improved to encompass this topic:slight_smile:

2

This does it, but new searchers might not think of it. Putting SAT in quotes. http://www.wikihow.com/Special:LSearch?search="sat"

3

yea i was just think that over, most people wouldn’t know to encase it in quotes. Shouldn’t it match exact terms first?

4

i’m curious to see if this is being looked into? I think it would help student wikiHow surfers:slight_smile:

5

Hi SudoKing, This is definitely a quirk of our search functionality. We use the Google Search Appliance (GSA), a piece of hardware within our infrastructure, to do searches for logged in users only. An option that is turned on by default is “stemming”, where related words (conjugated or pluralized) are seen as equivalent for the purpose of searching. This is why, in the example search you gave above, the words “sit”, “sat”, “sits” and “sitting” all return the same search results. “match” and “matches” return the same results too. Often this is what you want, but in this case it’s not. We could make a special case for SAT if you think that’s sufficient. Logged out users see a different search page. The page will have ads, more slowly updated content and no extra meta data in the index (but likely more relevant results to the search – Google is better than the GSA than choosing relevant articles). http://www.wikihow.com/Special:GoogSearch?cx=008953293426798287586%3Amr-gwotjmbs&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=UTF-8&q=sat&siteurl=www.wikihow.com%2FSpecial%3AGoogSearch%3Fq%3Dsat&siteurl=www.wikihow.com%2FSpecial%3AGoogSearch%3Fq%3Dsat Reuben

6

SudoKing and Ttrimm, I made that special case for searching for SAT. Reuben

7

Thanks Reuben! <3

8

:slight_smile: