I have found the search feature to be very unreliable. Perhaps I am doing something wrong and if so I would definitely appreciate someone telling me what that is.

For example, here is a recent post on mine: http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthread.php?sduid=4558&t=445984

It clearly has "ca internet security" in the title and message text. However, if I do a search for "ca internet security" it is not found. It is also not found if I do an advanced search and specify "hot topics" as the thread.

The only way I have been able to find the post is by doing an advanced search by my username.

Is the search feature broken, or am I doing something wrong here?

The search engine doesn't index 2 letter words/digits. If you search for "internet security" it brings it up.

I have found that choosing one keyword to search at a time works much better than trying to pull a string of words

that it might take a couple of keyword searches to find it.

if something has an apostrophe...search the word without (chadwick vs chadwick's)

if something is in quotation marks...it may not recognize the words inside them.

slashes right next to words ( Sprint/phone) can throw off a search.

Its not unreliable, its primative.

This is part of a larger problem where sometimes if you search for something, the page will say it did not find anything that matches, so you have to click reload, and then the results will show up. redsolar told me last year that the db is slow to catch up and that's why that happens. i.e. you get taken to the results page before the results are actually ready, and the app goes? wtf? where are doz results? and it figures something went haywire and defaults out

It's possible what I am describing has been fixed since then, but what you describe sounds similar, as I don't believe it's entirely related to the way search terms are indexed (for those that are indexed).

A different issue is where you have accidentally saved undesirable search preferences, and that can screw up your results. In that case, you need to go to 'advanced search' and clear your search preferences. If your are experiencing something funny i would try this before anything else.

This is part of a larger problem where sometimes if you search for something, the page will say it did not find anything that matches, so you have to click reload, and then the results will show up. redsolar told me last year that the db is slow to catch up and that's why that happens. i.e. you get taken to the results page before the results are actually ready, and the app goes? wtf? where are doz results? and it figures something went haywire and defaults out

Fixed, for a while now. If search returns "no results" now, it's either truly no results, or the query has had trouble (1-2 letter words/numbers, etc)
A different issue is where you have accidentally saved undesirable search preferences, and that can screw up your results. In that case, you need to go to 'advanced search' and clear your search preferences. If your are experiencing something funny i would try this before anything else.

That's a user parameters issue, but I don't think it's the case here.