I’m working with someone on a book project, and as a starting point would like to find his previously published materials on the web. (And, ideally, pull them into DTP.) But so far, using Google directly is giving better results than DA.
For example, typing the query “2009 site:aikieast.blogspot.com” gives exactly the results I would expect: a list of articles from that site, with publication dates in 2009.
But giving the exact same query to DA, using the Google plug-in, gives no results. Or rather, the log correctly shows 169 pages found, but all of them are filtered out as “no match.”
I’ve tried this with both DA2.3.1 and DA3.0pb2, with every combination of settings I can think of, with no success.
DEVONagent doesn’t support specific operators like “site:…” (yet). One workaround is to use File > New Plugin…, to paste the domain (“aikieast.blogspot.com”) and to use this new plugin instead. Another workaround is to use the secondary query “2009”.
And a third workaround is to create a new search set named “Google”, add the Google plugin, set the secondary query to “*” (without quotes), disable the filter for similar pages and enable all file types.
I’ve been experimenting with plug-ins, with some success. What’s confusing me, though, is that the query finds the pages I’m looking for – they appear in the log – but then filters them out.
So everything works right up until the very end: the right query is sent to Google, the desired results come back … and then the filter drops them on the floor. Not only is that frustrating in this specific case, but it makes me realize that I don’t understand how the filtering works or how to control it. That makes it difficult to trust any search results from DA.
DEVONagent is matching title, text, etc. (see advanced settings) on its own, therefore you should use DEVONagent’s boolean/wildcard syntax (e.g. not the site: operator). If you don’t like this, just set the secondary query to *