Problems searching the AO site

[MaryEllen]

I'm not 100% sure if the original post meant the search wasn't functioning here on the forum or over on the main site, but I wanted to add my experience here since I was just having (perhaps) similar difficulties.

From the main site I was searching for specific book titles that I was *certain* were on the site, and was getting 0 results. I was typing into the search box on the top of the site and was getting zero results. I thought I had mistyped, and then when and looked in the year I thought it was in which took a little longer that a search would have but since I had an idea of where to look wasn't a big deal. I really thought I had mistyped something and then didn't give it another thought when I manually when to what I was looking for. Today I was looking for The Gift of the Magi by O Henry. I thought it had been mentioned somewhere, but it didn't come up. That's when I noticed that the search engine automatically used in this case was different than what I usually use. So I tested it with ones I knew it should find. Search terms like "livingston" and "polo" weren't coming up with anything. Not a single result. I remember the search feature on the site being much more effective when I last used it (who knows when that was though...) so I decided to try some same searches but on different search engines.

Here are some of my exact searches and their results:

polo site:amblesideonline.org
0 results from duckduckgo, 46 from google, 0 from bing

livingston site:amblesideonline.org
0 results from duckduckgo, 35 from google, 0 from bing

o henry site:amblesideonline.org
0 results from duckduckgo, 178 from google, 0 from bing

churchill site:amblesideonline.org
5 results from duckduckgo, 166 from google, 5 from bing

just added one more, from the previous post:

washington site:amblesideonline.org
0 results from duckduckgo, 209 from google, 0 from bing

I'm sure that the search engine was chosen for specific reasons, but it seems like the current one is not working (and that Bing wouldn't be any better). Finding 0 results could be very frustrating or lead someone to believe various books are not included only to find out later that their results lead them to the wrong conclusion and they passed on a book they would have otherwise purchased. (Because my guess is that many times people are searching the website to quickly see if a book they have come across is needed for a future year). It is very possible I have a setting that is preventing results from appearing, but I can't think of what it might be (if you know, please tell me!)

I have had the same experience with the search, for quite some time now. I don't know if it is because it uses duckduckgo, or some other reason, but I get no results when searching a book title or a term that I know for certain is on the website.