Improve the search function

I'd really like to see the search function improved. It leaves so very much to be desired as it is. It's so bad that I've recently taken to see if an outside search engine will help me find forum posts that I'm looking for quicker. No luck. Do you block outside search engines from searching the forum?

Here's what would be helpful:

Remove multiple results of the same thread. This would cut down on the results and decrease your bandwidth as users have to otherwise go through page after page of results.

Offer the option to show search results by relevancy or date. Right now showing search results only by date makes it incredibly difficult to find older posts as you have to go through so many pages to find it.

More accurate use of wording in the search field for forum posts. Sometimes I want to place several key words to find an old post, and I get either nothing or a few really recent posts.

If this is a limitation of the forum software, then perhaps you could use an outside search engine the way winehq.org does with their search field?

Yep, we know it's terrible - embarrassing even. We will be replacing the search engine, but there are higher priorities so it won't happen until around the end of year.

We don't block google, so search like "site:mountainproject.com my search words" should work as well as anything.

Nick, Thank you for the reply. And also thank you for the syntax needed to search here externally. I had tried the advance search functions on google with plugging in the domain name and couldn't get it to work. I'm glad it will be changing even if later on in the year. Some of these old post are really important in terms of the information in them.