Search function

What's up with it?

It hasn't been improved, but it slows the site down a lot at a time when we're pushing the limits, so we've tried to stop bots triggering it, tried to encourage people to use Google's servers and not us, and also it should stop malicious use.

Anyway, what doesn't work?

 

I'm still not convinced that bots can slow our site by filling out search forms, but heh, it might help.

 

No idea - I haven't seen any mention of such a thing, just the site search that I've used. There are loads of google experiments and widgets around though so I may have missed it. Do you have a link?

 

Yup, same here. School boy error of getting stuff working in Firefox and forgetting to check it in IE. I'll get it sorted. Thanks for the spot. Does stop people using it though!

 

Sorted. Thanks.

 

This SHOULD only happen if

1) You type in the wrong code

2) You leave the page for longer than a minute with the same code before submitting

3) You don't enter anything in the search box.

I've just tested it again and it's going fine. I can't see any reason why the function (not the appearance) should be browser dependent either, but just to check I did a search in IE and FF.

Can you try it a few times and tell me if there's anything consistent about the problem or whether you always get problems? Any more detail you can give would be good to - what exactly you were searching for and so on.