Are search terms like "AR-15" purposefully hidden in the Start10 search?

from Stardock Forums

I've noticed a weird issue lately, and I'm yet to find out if it is a bug, quirk or that way by design.

I have plenty of documents and files with the term "AR-15" in the file name. When searching using Window's native "Windows 10 Menu" search, I get plenty of hits for the search term "AR-15". But when I do the same search via Start10 (just writing the term after clicking on the Start button), I don't get any hits at all.

Given today's climate, it's hard to know if this is by design or not. I would hope that Start10 isn't hiding our own files from us just because the name is controversial, but one has to ask these days. That's the only affected term I've noticed, so I have no idea if it also applies to other terms. So... is this an issue with my PC, or does Start10 actively hide those search results?

2,117 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top

Hello,

Sorry to hear you are having issues. 

Please post your setting on this two area on search.

1) Start10 Config windows.

And Start10Tweaks (usually in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Stardock\Start10\Start10tweak.exe")

 

 

 

Basj,

Stardock Community Assistant.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

The search does not hide files based on any specific terms.  It may well be the term is too short or the location of those files is simply not included in the search index or the - is being interpreted as a negative.

Multiplicity - Control multiple PCs using one keyboard and mouse
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top

Checked the "Search should include files outside the standard libraries" and "Also search file contents looking for matches". They were both active.

I hope that the search doesn't have a black list for search terms. It's a sad reality that these days those things have to be explicitly asked and can't be taken for granted. Especially with firearm-related and non-pc terms as is so typical with Google.

If the term is deemed too short, then that is probably something that should be looked into since it's obvious that there are legitimate four characters words. But I imagine that if that were truly the issue this would have been noted and fixed ages ago... hence why other search engines like Window's 10 don't seem to have trouble with the same term.

If the issue is the '-' being considered a negative term to exclude, then I'd definitely put that in the realm of a bug. But I doubt that's the issue since I use dashes all the time and haven't ever noticed a similar problem before.

 

Just for context and proof here are some search results showing proof that the issue isn't just my imagination.

Start10 Search - No true results:

Windows 10 Search - Results as expected:

 

Anyway, I still find this issue pretty annoying but since I still don't know what other situations it applies to it's hard to realize how small or big of an issue it might be.