Not your fault, but search sucks

[sarnell2]

vBulletin search is so frustrating. For those of you who aren't programmers I'll try to explain why it could be better. Every topic/post you make is stored in a relational database (usually MySQL), that was designed by vBulletin. That's fine. A+. When you search, a scripting language (usually PHP for forums), "sends" (using GET so the search is visible in the URL) your search and "matches" it (using LIKE %%) with terms from certain tables in its database. Good enough for what we're looking for.

The problem is that when you search multiple terms, it queries the database for each term in the search individually and then returns the result of all its matches. There's no "relevance." If it finds a post that contains ANY of the terms you searched for it brings it back. If you search Panasonic Blu-Ray Player, it will bring back any post that contains the word "Panasonic" "Blu-Ray" or "Player" instead of first displaying the posts that include all three. It makes searching very painful.