@forum-owner

In order to get some ideas of here's on "Visual Outliner", I tried the search for "Visual Outliner", with the double quotes; I got an error message in the line of "not allowed", in fact "character not allowed", so a so-called "phrase search" isn't possible currently. I then entered Visual Outliner and got 229 "results", most of them allegedly - I hadn't the patience to check this really out - for whole threads where each item is anywhere in the thread, even on different output pages, i.e. not even a "near search". (I suppose "AND", not "OR" here, since "OR" would have brought a 4-digit "result" list instead, I would think.)

Most developers are aware of similar problems and thus name their software in one word, but there is no "VisualOutliner" unfortunately; the same applies to some other software.

I suppose you have bought or do rent the search functionality for this forum. (?) - Perhaps there is some "phrase search" functionality just to be activated? (Don't know, of course.)

(The other alternative for similar problems would probably consist of downloading the archive - but is it up-to-date? - and then put your respective desktop search upon it.)

Just use Google:

site:www.outlinersoftware.com "Visual Outliner"

Site search on most websites is lousy.

You're right, that's the way I do it very often indeed, whenever that's necessary (I just missed to mention it here), but doing so systematically would somewhat invalidate any try to implement a basic site-proprietary search functionality.

The synthesis: If the latter is "lousy", then, why not discard it BUT trigger the respective "site:YourSite.NowAround2,000AvailableSuffixesOfWhichAroundAtLeast990AreCrap google search (even some additional tab) from any user input (plus "enter") in the search field (which would remain then).

I think if google doesn't prevent this use (I didn't try it out yet), that would be the very best-while-being-awfully-easy idea for doing it for most sites out there, currently.

Domain name is enough, by removing www. you get all subdomains hits too, like blog.xyz.com forum.xyz.com ftp. news. etc it might have, also can swap around:

"Shangri la" +heaven -hell site:xyz.com

+ means included or must be in hits, - means excluded or must not be:

Outline +tree -plant -garden

Another useful one, filetype, e.g. Find all doc, epub, PDF, txt, cvs etc

E.g. search for thesis, but only as pdf, in MIT:

site:mit.edu filetype:pdf thesis

Or every pdf it's got:

site:abc.com filetype:pdf

https://www.google.com/search?&q=site%3Aabc.com+filetype%3Apdf+&oq=site%3Aabc.com+filetype%3Apdf

https://ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators/

Do this search option really still work?
The "-" as an excluding pattern was unfortunately removed long ago.
And i have my real educated doubts about a few others.

Google search has become as lousy as the average site search when
you really want looking for something and not its not a pop culture question.

I think the - exclude still works, not sure but think so.

They removed the wildcards * ? ! long ago.

The problem is with their ranking algorithms, getting worse every year, just monetizing plus whatever else major evil they are doing for business, AI, etc etc.

Yeah, I have noticed it is much harder for me to search using Google in recent years. I used to be able to be very specific in what I was looking for, but it seems like it is now increasingly more geared to what it "thinks" I am looking for, which in many cases is the same thing, but not always. In any case, I now use DuckDuckGo for privacy reasons.

Not suggesting I can beat Google at search, but I can certainly add a phrase search to the forum pretty easily. I'll add it to the list.

They link people / homes / offices/etc by their logins, google sites/apps/android/etc or non-google logins, to the individual file they have on everyone / household / org etc. Then it goes as a parameter into their hits (search results) algorithm targeted at IP locations.

If moving IP/address/country, they will find you again and re-index your new ip/location to your file. No escape. They have many tools: IP based searches, googleupdate.exe on Win etc, Android, apps, logins, cookies, Hey Google, Wear OS Watches, etc.

The mix in the algorithms has elements: IP based personal/home/org files history, recent censoring (pushing down the list) and more parameters. But mainly monetization sub-algorithms. They link each search to their files on presumed searcher(s) / homes / orgs.

Not difficult, China is doing the same indexing by software/hardware, so is Russia and a few other regimes. Amazon denies doing so as Alphabet (Google) does via Alexa, as do Apple etc.

VPN from a truly private company might be the only fix, for now, or is it? Hearing of soft/hard backdoors in everything or secret records by big VPN companies.

The main reason hits are getting worse is because of their monetization elements for the target audience (tailored results) in their algorithms getting bigger.

By the time google has AI singularity, it will tell you only what it wants and also what you want to search for, will be accepted and effective for most people.