Forum "search" broken again?

[Skuzzy]

For all the good things about the SMF bulletin board, the search facility is terrible.  Even the SMF guys say it is pretty bad.  The only suggestion they have is to switch to a third party utility that is not real time.

I tried it and it was nasty.  Never consistently worked and the SMF folks were no help, nor the third party who wrote the thing.

Basically it is what it is and there really is not much we can do about it.

[The Fugitive]

Is it possible to extend the "time out" function a bit. More data to dig through means more time, and the amount of data added daily will only compound the problem.

[Skuzzy]

Extending the timeout exacerbates the problem with the forums locking up.  As it is people get impatient waiting for the results and they start it again.

There have been times I have seen 30 to 40 extended searches, for the same thing, running.  The timeout is the only thing that kills all those processes.  During that time the forum is locked up.  The longer timeout would make it worse.

[Jayhawk]

I make it a race, start the forum search and then see if I can find it through google before the results load.