Mail archive search broken

Jason Smethers jason at smethers.net
Thu Apr 28 18:28:11 PDT 2005


justin at xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
Someone might want to take a look at the google search form on the mail
archive page: <http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/>
The WWW option is searching the entire internet, and the mail archive
option is search the entire dragonfly website.


The WWW option is supposed to search the entire Internet.  The mail
archive option searches everything on leaf.dragonflybsd.org, which will
pull in things from user folders and so on.  Google's sitesearch function
can't be restricted to a subset of a site, that I know of.  It's not
perfect, but it is free.
Putting together a new search function would be handy, using htdig or
something similar - it's a project for anyone who wants it.


First, if I go to a website and they have a google search option, I 
expect the www option to implicitly mean search their website. I can go 
to google myself to search the Internet.

Second, when I see "dragonfly mail archives" and select it, I expect the 
search to be restricted to the mail archives, not the entire site. I do 
not want to receive man pages in the results.

Simply put, the descriptions do not match the expected behavior.

I personally do not like htdig. Its search results are usually marginal.

Since google seems to be restricted domain names, why not add an alias 
for the mail archive, such as mailarchive.dragonflybsd.org, and setup 
the google search option to search using that domain.

Thanks,
Jason




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