Forum search engine

[artington]

I have been trying to track comments on the new Sigma 24-70mm HSM lens. I have tried with Sigma 24-70, Sigma 24-70mm, 24-70 etc and I get zero response because the "words are too common". However, Sigma HSM does elicit about 150 responses but this is rather unspecific. I have had this problem with other lens searches as well. It is a real pity that this very useful resource is let down by a weak search engine.

[David Kilpatrick]

I think the issue is not a weak search engine, it is the hyphen in 24-70mm etc. I have encountered this before and it is, of course, a search operator.

The forum software rather neatly changes hyphens to en dashes in posts to prevent problems - Alt+hyphen on the Mac keyboard. If you enter "24-70mm" with the hyphen as an en-dash not a minus operator, you will find all the posts. But searching for just "24-70" does not work as you need to have words of at least three characters to get a valid search return. Use the quote marks to surround the search term as well, it helps narrow it down.

David