Does Our Archives Work?

I often like to look topics up in the archives and, in many other forums, can find just about anything I am looking for there. Here, in this forum, when I do a search, the results seldom relate to the searched topic. Does our archives here work? If so, can someone explain to me how to use it?

Thanks Much,
Joe H

Joe -

Well, the answer is yes but most likely not so well! The built-in search tool for vBulletin is not that robust. I find that in order to find something, it's best if you know a specific word from a post that is unique and will help to narrow the search down. The other thing is the vBulletin tools don't allow uses of quotes, +, -, etc like other search engines to further narrow the search.

That said, I use google's "site" search most of time and have been reasonably rewarded. Again, the trick seems to be to know a specific word or phrase to find something. The google search won't let you look in just the Airhead threads, so that's where something specifically related to an Airhead motorcycle in the search terms is helpful.

Check out this thread for search tips on the forum:

https://forums.bmwmoa.org/showthread.php?77843-Tips-on-Searching-the-MOA-Forum

Also look at this Best of Forum thread about the Tag Cloud. It can be helpful as well, but it relies on a consistent assignment of tags to threads that get to the heart of the matter.

https://forums.bmwmoa.org/showthread.php?75890-Do-you-ever-use-the-quot-Tag-Cloud-quot

Thanks for the info. I had already gave up on using the forum's search feature, and had been using google. But first entering BMWMOA.org, as you suggested, works great! I went back and placed with the forum's search feature a bit more, and used your suggestions. The results pale in comparison with google, so I will probably just use google from now on, remembering to add BMWMOA.

Thanks Again,
Joe Hall