Google Reopens the #navbarfail Issue !

Wow, after announcing that the issue was 'fixed' google have reopened it.

Here's the google known issues page

Some progress perhaps in fixing navbar fails

navbar search problems never mentioned, so far as I can tell

The official google blog has a regular feature called This Week in Search. 
It has never mentioned the navbar search function so far as I can tell, and certainly I can find no mention of the problems with the navbar search function.

#navbarfail

Example 3 : #navbarfail in the Official Googleblog

The official google blog is here http://googleblog.blogspot.com/

In 2005 the blog mentioned the Wizard of Oz

• Entering [wizard of oz] into the navbar of the Google blog reveals no results 
  (obviously try it for yourself). The navbar search doesn't work

This is a #navbarfail

Example 2 : #navbarfail in Rick Klau's blog

Rick Klau is the product manager of Blogger, and he has a blog

In December 2007 Rick wrote this amusing post which contains the word wormhole. Let's try:

• Entering [wormhole] into the navbar of Rick's blog reveals no results 
  (obviously try it for yourself). This is a #navbarfail

Trying other search methods

• Entering [wormhole] into the Search this blog widget in the sidebar success 
• Using google blogsearch for the [wormhole site:http://tins.rklau.com]  success

This is a #navbarfail

What's the problem?

The problem is easy to state.

• the 'Navbar' is the stripe at the top of all blogger blogs (on this blog it's the black stripe)
• the search box is supposed to, well, search the contents of the blog
• it works for recent posts but older posts are not found
• you can test this on your own blog: enter some text from an old post into the search box and see if the post is found
• here are some examples

This bug has existed since at least mid 2009. In other posts I plan to look at the history of the problem and what you can do

Has the problem been raised with google?

Yes, the problem has been much discussed, the key place is in the blogger help forums.

There are three main threads, two of which are now closed, and one remains open

The two closed threads ran from August 2009 to Jan 2010 and they are

• here and
• here

The thread that is still open, and where you can add your comments, and submit a bug report is

• here

Do not assume that comments on this blog attract any attention from google. To communicate with google use the thread above.

Example 1 : #navbarfail in my blog

Here's an example from my own blog, Green Ideas http://blog.greenideas.com where in several posts I have mentioned the well known author Douglas Hofstadter (it's that kind of blog)

However

• going to my blog and entering the word [hofstadter] in the navbar yields no results
• but the posts are indexed in google: go to the main google page and search for [hofstadter site:blog.greenideas.com] and these results are found

This shows that

• posts with the word hofstadter do exist
• they are indexed in google
• but the navbar search does not work

This is a #navbarfail

You may wish to add your own examples in comments