# Can we search with fewer letters?



## northwoodsgal (Apr 21, 2019)

I recently tried searching for VRI (the management company for the timeshare I own) and received the following message:

*The following error occurred:*
_Keywords:
The search could not be completed because the search keywords were too short, too long, or too common.
_
I later did a search for "RCI Points" and got the same error message.  

We have so many short acronyms being used on this BBS and sometimes it's the best way to search for the topic you're interested in.  Is there a way to allow the search to accept, say, three letters for a search?


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## alwysonvac (Apr 21, 2019)

Try using Google Search.
The format is _search term_ site:_url_

For example: Go to google.com and type _VRI site:tugbbs.com_


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## dioxide45 (Apr 21, 2019)

https://tug2.net/Global_TUG_Search.html


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## paxsarah (Apr 21, 2019)

The drawback to the Google search is that you can’t limit it to a single forum, single username, or sort by date. That said, I use it a lot and I can generally put together a search that separates the wheat from the chaff.


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## northwoodsgal (Apr 21, 2019)

When I searched VRI, it came back with 909 results.  Not being able to search by date or forum is a big drawback.


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## bizaro86 (Apr 21, 2019)

northwoodsgal said:


> When I searched VRI, it came back with 909 results.  Not being able to search by date or forum is a big drawback.



You can google search by date.

But I would still like 3 letter searches. Because the forum I search most often is the sightings forum (to get a sense of likelihood), and Google can't see it.


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## TUGBrian (Apr 22, 2019)

unfortunately this is actually a limitation of the database xenforo (and most online forums) uses.

i believe you can actually get around this by using a wildcard in your search.

so for instance if you wanted to search for ABC...just that string is 3 letters so it would fail.  you could instead do ABC* (alternatively a % might also work, im not sure...ill have to test it).


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