Where has advanced search gone?

The search function is dogshit now. I reported my post on a separate thread so mumsnet would reply to me, but they kept totally missing my very clear point that I can’t use the advanced search as efficiently as before, and just kept wittering on about what device was I on. (Which I’d said).

It was replaced with a new and Improved system that is worse in every way.

It's bloody annoying. Is it available now only to Premium subscribers, I wonder?

coukd anyone on MNHQ confirm if the issues with search will be addressed? Reporting this post for review

Actually looking at this again, I think that the issue is that it did search for the full phrase but there were no results. Instead of just telling me that and saying “no results” it then started looking for alternative spellings, or the words individually. I don’t find that helpful (I always check the spelling of my search terms) but perhaps others do.

I'm curious.. why chrome and not Safari?

I posted this on the “New a format” thread but reposting here as this thread is specifically about search:

I just did a search for a phrase in quotation marks, with a very specific spelling - it was “ninja Kidz” (a YouTube channel name; my son loves it and I wondered what other parents thought).
It’s returned a load of threads about blenders (nutri ninja) and a million with just the word “kids” in it- even though I searched “kidZ” not “kidS”.

It has ignored that it’s a complete phrase and searched the individual words. I can see now way to filter the results to only show mentions of the complete phrase “ninja kidz”.

Isnt this a fairly basic requirement if a search function? It seems pretty useless otherwise.

Just to test, I did a Google search for the thread I’ve been totally unable to find for the past couple of days when in the 'new' MN search. I put a paraphrase of the thread title into Google, not even using the exact terms, as it turned out, and it appeared instantly as the first result.

Then, using one search term which I then knew for sure was contained in the OP's posts, I went back to MN search. It still utterly failed to find it. Without the option to 'search posts that contain the words….' , the functionality is gone. And that’s how I used Advanced Search, not by searching by poster or thread title.

Honestly, this really is rubbish (and by the way, the non-capitalising of the first letter in a new paragraph is driving me nuts! I’m on an iPad and whatever MN has done is overriding the automatic iPad setting. MNHQ, please sort this!)

Yeah it’s awful and I’m surprised MNHQ haven’t responded to calls about it. Particularly annoying that Google is more efficient than the search tool on its own site!

I used advance search all the time, for instance if I was reading a thread and wanted to find an update but hadn't bookmarked it. I'd just stick in a couple of key words and a date range of a couple of days and it was a doddle. I've just tried to find one I was reading a few days ago and it's impossible especially as I can't remember which section it was in. The slidebar is rage inducing and kept defaulting to a month ago as well.

Going to give up with MN if it's such a hassle!

I've been wondering about this as well. The search page still exists, but there appears to be no link to it anywhere. I found it by Googling!

Trying going to www.mumsnet.com/search and you should see it

The date sliders are truly dreadful, who on earth did MN hire to build this new site? It's a classic web design fail, like using a calendar widget when people are filling in their date of birth.

The search function is now so clunky it’s virtually unusable. I posted about this yesterday. I used Advanced Search a lot, often to find threads I remembered but with not very much information, and I could pretty much always find them. Now - forget it.

The slider bar for dates is just utterly ridiculous. Someone else on another thread pointed out that you have to move it until there’s a fraction of a hair's-breadth on the right if you want to search posts from, say, this year. Completely nonsensical, whereas before you could sensibly enter the date-range.

MNHQ have said they'll get round to ‘everything' but will they fix this? Dunno, but it’s incredibly annoying.

Well, does this mean that folk will find it more difficult to track another poster's posts etc?

Yes, it does. And I suppose that might be handy to keep any stalkery lurkers at bay but it's not so helpful if you want to see useful and informative posts from PigletJohn or phr37bridge for instance.

Well, does this mean that folk will find it more difficult to track another poster's posts etc? Maybe the name change feature might not be a necessary anymore.
But I might be wrong, I rarely if ever use the search function anyway. Just read, respond or lurk. That's me. If I find anything that interests me I "watch" the thread.

Yes.

The 4cm wide slider bar in my phone to scroll through TWENTY-TWO YEARS of dates is really useful. 😂

It looks like this on the mobile site.

I really hope it hasn't gone for good. Mumsnet's quite boring without it.

It looks like they have merged search and advanced search. i would usually search by a specific date range which you cant now do. Are MN replying to any queries or just not about this?

you can type a word or a user name into Search and it will bring up a list of posts