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NI Site Searching Broken?

I wasn't sure where else to ask this question, as I wanted to know if others had the same problem. I could not find a specific board for web site specific queries. Anyway, here goes. Anybody else seen oddities with the search tool that's at the top of pages on the NI site? This morning I was double-checking something and I entered a search of "ni-daqmx labview runtime engine" (no quotes entered in the textbox) and selected "Entire Site" for scope. I got 11 hits:



 I found that quite curious. I then changed the scope to "NI Developer Zone" and got... 42 hits!.



Hmmm... I wasn't aware that "NI Developer Zone" wasn't part of the entire site. The "Entire Site" search also claims there's only 6 hits in "NI Developer Zone".

Anybody else seen this behavior?

Message Edited by smercurio_fc on 07-24-2007 08:50 AM

Message Edited by smercurio_fc on 07-24-2007 08:51 AM

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Message 1 of 8
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I too have seen this.  It is strange.  Actually, a few years ago the search engine was great, then something changed.  The support request section search is almost useless now.
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Message 2 of 8
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Hey, guys -

Thanks for the feedback. Let me explain what's going on:

One of the side effects of a very active message board community is that there are many, many posts on many, many NI-related subjects. This is great for lots of reasons, but it has one drawback: search results tend to become flooded with links to forum posts. When the Search Team first became aware of this issue a couple years back, it was addressed by simply removing the forum post results from the top-level search.

However, it's very apropos that you should be mentioning this now, because we've been looking into other ways to get around this. I'm not a fan of that particular functionality, so we're going to see if we can implement this in some better way.

I also have a question for Brian -- you say "the support request section is almost useless now" -- can you elaborate on that a bit? Ideally, a URL and an example would be the most helpful.

Thanks!
Sarah K.
Search PME
National Instruments
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Message 3 of 8
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OK. That part makes sense. However, it doesn't explain why in the search I did the result showed 5 "Tutorials and Application Notes" in the "Entire Site" scope, but 6 "Tutorials and Application Notes" in the "NI Developer Zone" scope. I have seen this same thing with other searches as well, so it doesn't seem to be limited to just forum messages.
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Message 4 of 8
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Sarah-

Go to ni.com/ask, and put almost anything into the topic.  Use "HP 4194a" for example.  Select "Programming My Application", and the returned results have nothing to do with the search.  There are a bunch of discussions related to this instrument, and there are even drivers for it, but now you are about to post something because the discussion forum items didn't show up.  I used to wonder why I would see the same kinds of question continually getting posted on the discussion forums, but now I know why.

Also, it is annoying when you select "New Search" that you are forced to reenter your version number, and even the question type.

Thanks,

Brian

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Message 5 of 8
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That is odd, and at first glance the reason wasn't clear to me either. However, I just did a few minutes of research, and the difference between the two is that Entire Site is limited to English only (you can see it in the URL: language:en), whereas the DevZone search is only looking for documents that are identified as DevZone documents. For instance, if we search for the string testo, we get almost no results on Entire Site but we get several non-English results with DevZone selected.

I wasn't aware of this, actually -- this configuration was made before I joined the Search Team, so offhand I'm not certain of the rationale behind that decision.

In the meantime, please feel free to continue giving feedback. I have lots of target areas for improvement on my list for the future, but I'm always interested in hearing what Search features do and don't work for you.

Have a nice evening!


Sarah K.
Search PME
National Instruments
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Message 6 of 8
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Brian,

Thanks for that example. Although Request Support isn't an application I own, I know the folks who do, and I'll make sure this feedback gets sent their way. I can definitely see why it might be advantageous to have forum posts appear under those circumstances,  but perhaps the owners have some rationale that hasn't occurred to me. Thanks!
Sarah K.
Search PME
National Instruments
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Message 7 of 8
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Hi Brian,

We are aware of the problem that Discussion Forum results do not show up in the search at www.ni.com/ask.  We hope to have this problem fixed sometime before the end of the year.

If you know that you would like to post your question to the Discussion Forum, you can start at forums.ni.com in the appropriate board for your question if you like.  When you click "New Message" you will first go through a search of Discussion Forum messages. 

I apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your feedback!

Regards,
Laura
Web Support & Operations
National Instruments
Message 8 of 8
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