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Short word searches: Street names & businesses

Vivienne14

Vivienne14

Kentish Brummie Moderator
Staff member
Edited 12/11/20. There is now a thread containing commonly searched short street names here.

Short street name & place searches list

This list of streets and places is made up of names with less than 3 letters. These are sometimes difficult to find through the search function. This is intended as a quick reference for those names. If you would like me to add to this list please post any suggestions for this thread here...
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk

If you still cannot find a short name, please let me know.
Viv

——————————————————————————







Sometimes a thread can’t be found because the words in the title have only three or less letters. We’re looking at ways to overcome this. Meanwhile, I’ve changed the titles of some threads where I know this is a problem eg

Big Top - now changed to BigTop
New Street - now changed to NewStreet
A B Row- now changed to ABRow

So when searching please remove gaps between short words. And do let me know of any titles which are problematic. Thanks. Viv.
 
Last edited:
Viv,

This is a problem with many search systems. Entering a word such as "New" will generally produce in the results words such as Newton, Newcastle, etc., which if allowed would result in an overload. If searching for, say, New Street enclose the whole lot in quotes including the appropriate spaces, e.g. " New St". It won't solve every problem, but will solve many. Note that I have abbreviated the word Street, because some people do that, and this should find both long and short versions without complaints from the search engine. :)

Maurice
 
I think if you quoted it like "University of Birmingham" (double quotes) the thread might come up, although the error with "or" being common still happened. But if you searched it like ''University of Birmingham'' (single quotes twice) it doesn't work.
 
Thanks for comments.

I think once people have had the opportunity to comment I shall draw up a list of ‘problematic’ thread titles (with links) and insert it into the first post on this thread. It just offers another way of successfully locating the thread.

Viv.
 
Ell,

Single quotes used twice in succession will never work. It sees that as an empty string followed by your text and then another empty string. :)

Maurice
 
Viv,

Something like ABRow will work for titles only, but unless you're going to edit everyone's posts, it won't work for text where it occurs in other threads.

Maurice
 
If you are really desparate to find a short word on a forum you can try Google's Site search. I have occasionally used it.
If I wanted to search for 'ab' on the BHF I would type the following line into Google. Spaces etc are important.
"ab" site://https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/
It finds 200 instances for me and being Google it also finds images of 'ab row'
"yew" site://https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/
finds 673 instances for me
If you search for the word 'and' you get 25700 results which shows why xenforo avoids short word searches ...:grinning:

No computer search is perfect ... :rolleyes:
 
Right, I can see there is no one approach that guarantees finding short words. So at the moment, the best we can do is offer a few simple suggestions to members to help them find threads. Obviously it won’t be fullproof, but it might help to resolve some instances.

Further suggestions welcome, thanks for those so far. Also if anyone has identified any threads which can’t be found, please post them on here. Thanks everyone. Viv.
 
I've often looked at ways of searching for particular images on the BHF and there are ways using the forum search but Robots are continually collecting data from the site and a familiar one is the Google Robot.

So playing with Google 'site search' put the following line in Google. Copy and paste it if necessary.
"coppermine" site://https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/

After hitting 'enter' just click 'images' under the Google search box and 265 BHF pics appear. They are interesting and some you might have forgotten about, but Google goes for BHF pages with 'coppermine' in the text and those pages have other images which also appear. The first one on my computer is the Greenman pub in Harborne but perhaps Google sends something different to each of us.

So still working on it ...:cool:
 
As we’re about to go into lockdown again, I’ve decided to try and build up an easily accessible list of any short word thread titles - that is those with 3 or less letters such as ‘New’ ‘Row’ ‘Big’ etc.

I’d like help with this please. So if you come across any short words in thread titles please post to this thread - if possible with a link to the thread. Hopefully we can build up a list which will at least help in some instances. I accept this isn’t the ideal solution. But in the absence of anything else, at least some will in future be more easily found in one place with a direct link to the appropriate threads.

Many thanks.

Viv.
 
Some examples:

Big Top

BigTop

The bombing of 1941-2 devastated this large site, and until about 1950, the cleared site was used for circuses, fairs and the like. I must have been to at least one circus there, but I especially remember a fair in about November 1945.
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk

New Street Aston

NewStreet Aston

harry overtons betting shop...new st aston 1960... lyn
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk

New Street Birmingham
https://birminghamhistory.co.uk/forum/index.php?threads/newstreet-birmingham.38783/

Sun Street

Sun Street

Sun Street Can anyone tell me where Sun Street was. It would have been in inner Birmingham. Possibly Aston, or in the St Paul's Church area just off Livery Street. I can't find it in my A-Z, so It has possibly been demolished in the redevelopment of the inner city. ladywood
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk

Viv.
 
This afternoon I went through the Neighbour’s and Streets section and identified any short named streets. They’re now available in one handy list at the beginning of the Neighbours & Streets section. Should anyone have further suggestions, please comment on this thread. Many thanks. Viv.

Here’s the link to the list:

Short street name & place searches list

This list of streets and places is made up of names with less than 3 letters. These are sometimes difficult to find through the search function. This is intended as a quick reference for those names. If you would like me to add to this list please post any suggestions for this thread here...
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk
 
There is now a thread listing short business names which are difficult to find here

Short business name search list

This list of businesses is made up of business names with less than 3 letters. These are sometimes difficult to find through the search function. This is intended as a quick reference for those names. If you would like me to add to this list please post any suggestions for this thread here...
birminghamhistory.co.uk birminghamhistory.co.uk

Viv.
 
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