Repair Database and Site Search

Post by **1997volvo850** » 04 Jun 2016, 22:16

First of all, I love this site. Thanks for all the hard work you all put into the site. I looked around for a forum for site feedback but didn't find one. If this post is in the wrong place please feel free to relocate it.

Search has always been a problem for me on this site. I seem to have a hard time connecting to the appropriate entries in the repair database. When you go to the repair home page you have the option of browsing by category, model, or everything. For a Volvo 850 there are over 600 repairs posts to 'browse' through. What I'd really love is to be able to 'search' for repairs for my 850.

The category arrangement helps but items are not limited to my 850. When I drop down into "Due for PCV Job" I'd expect to see the two main tutorials I've found by searching the forums. These don't show up in the related posts section either. I was hoping to see a collection of relevant topics.

When I drop down into browse by vehicle I need to go through a list of repairs which appear to be sorted by date. This is painful. It would be nice if repairs were organize by system like many of the auto part sites use.

It would be so cool if I could search by system and model of car. Like '850' and 'cooling system' and get a bunch of organized repairs. I'm currently working on my PCV / PTC and I could image a bunch of the topics I've run across in the forums organized into an nice breather system library.

While I'm at the wishing well I think it would be cool to see a list of relevant repair tutorials when I enter a search on the site (maybe an advanced search option). Maybe use a users initial post as a search to the repair database. This might reduce duplication.

I was also thinking to write a diagnosis guide on oil leaks. There are a lot of threads on oil leaks with a lot of great information. It would be nice to have a guide that ties a lot of this together and relates it to the PCV system that often causes other problems. Maybe this already exists.

Search: Like I said it would be nice to be able to search on a system/vehicle or problem/vehicle and see repair tutorials listed right above forum topics.

I'm sure this is more work than anyone has time for. I'm willing to chip in some time and make an attempt to organize the dozens of PCV related repair tutorials.

Post by **abscate** » 05 Jun 2016, 05:38

What's tough about organizing repairs on 20 year old cars is that they are dynamic...as parts and vendors change, posts and reference material become dated.

With about a dozen certified gurus here, and another 3 dozen decent mechanics like me, the best way to get up to date is to start a new thread on a repair with your model in it. You'll get pointed to some who recently did the repair on the relevant model plus gotchas for your year too.

A guru network beats any search engine for relevance.

Post by **jreed** » 05 Jun 2016, 06:00

Agreed with the points above. Just wanted to add that I often use a google location restriction to find results, for example:

: Site search spec; Screen Shot 2016-06-05 at 7.59.02 AM.png (17.56 KiB) Viewed 836 times

The "site:matthewsvolvosite.com" at the end of the search forces Google to restrict the results to info on the MVS website.

Teddy1975 · Post by **Teddy1975** » 05 Jun 2016, 11:20

No need for using google site restriction. Just use the google custom search box at the top of the MVS to the left of the quick nav menu. It will also allow you to search for three letter words, which the forum software has been set to ignore.