Hi, Genie-
I've always found the Filter to be quite consistent, as long as you use the same search terms and time length. The Filter searches only the thread titles, so it doesn't have to work very hard. We have some 47,000 threads for the filter to search. Like Jim says, the Filter does trip up on punctuation (and special characters)in thread titles, which is why we encourage people to generally use standard English letters and numbers in thread titles. If there's an apostrophe, you have to use it in a thread title to make sense - but it does cause search problems.

The Forum Search (click) is a different beast. It searches our 700,000 messages under message title and user name. I think it's almost as reliable as the Filter.

The Digitrad and Forum Search (SuperSearch) is our most powerful search engine. It searches the entire text of all our messages, although I'm not sure if it also searches thread and message titles. While it's our most powerful searcher, it's also our most problematic one. Max has experimented with a number of different processes for this search engine, and we haven't yet come up with one that is completely satisfactory. The Filter and Forum Search are proven, solid engines. They work darn well - within the scope of their function. The SuperSearch is still what I would call "experimental" - it has always had problems.

Hope that helps.

-Joe Offer-