Interesting. I just did a couple of searches and the drop down menu showed "in roses" for me. Actually when I type a term in, eg. "Claire Rose" it allowed me to select "in Roses". When I did that, I only got results for the Roses Forum. So I typed "Claire Rose antique" then selected "in Roses" and got results for both the roses and antique roses forum.

At least that is what my results were. Of course, your mileage may vary.

There have been other issues in the past where another person's problem was not the same for me. Perhaps it is something to do with personal settings? Who knows, it is a mystery!!

Cheers, Rick

It is not to Houzz benefit to make our searches easier. They make no money from us, so their only hope is to misdirect and hope we get sucked in. I for one have always avoided companies that advertise on Houzz for that very reason. Probably unkind because it is my understanding that when individuals or companies start with Houzz, they cannot remove themselves without causing harm to their business. They appear to be Big Brother with no redeeming assets.

Yup! The ONLY money they make from us is if we BUY something from them or when we log in here so we count toward their traffic numbers. The more people here, the more they can charge to advertise here.

Searching in only the rose discussion no longer works for me either. I noticed it yesterday.

It still works for me. The deal is that you have to be on the main page of a forum to get the drop down menu to work. If you're inside a discussion, it won't work. Go back to the main forum page, Antique Rose, Roses, whatever, before you search. See if that helps.

I wonder if it depends if you're on the app, mobile website, etc.. I'm on the mobile website and it doesn't work even if I search from the main page of the Rose's forum.

Ah, that could be. I'm on a desktop computer. Haven't tried on a mobile device yet.

Houzz has made this whole site a pain in the a**! I did try to search for something last week to no avail, It wasn't even a very old thread, maybe a month or two ago, but I never found it. It came back with tons of totally unrelated threads on all different forums and not one from the rose forum that I could see. I gave up and moved on.

I agree that searching a topic on Google will get you better forum answers than searching on Houzz. I gave that up long ago - I was getting just a message asking me to tell them about "my project" every time I tried.

I do that with Amazon, too, although Amazon has extremely good searches. If I cannot find what I want on Amazon, I search on Google, and 9 times out of 10 I get answers which are from AMAZON, and then I click on them, and get into my normal Amazon account, but showing the results I am looking for.

Jackie

I can search on my laptop but not on my iPad. I don't recall how to alert Houzz that there is an issue - will try and find it later!

It still works on my laptop MacBook Pro. Firefox.

This has not worked on my phone iPad or laptop for at least a couple of weeks now. However it does work if using the backdoor gardenweb site.

I have been on Houzz for several years using the iPad and iPhone app. The app has never allowed searches in the the way you described that I ever noticed. Google does an excellent job though! Just type your search term followed by the words Rose Houzz. You will get lots of useful old threads this way.

Also the iPad’s Houzz app has been extremely reliable for me for several years now. It just limits me to 4 pictures per post, but as long as I stay in that limit it works pretty much perfectly. There was a glitchy few days once or twice last year but that’s all I can remember for having any problems. I keep all my software up-to-date. I would recommend for desktop users to be using the latest version of whatever browser you use to get on Houzz, since these companies optimize everything to work on only the last few versions of a platform. They don’t test website upgrades on very old versions of Safari, Explorer, Firefox or Chrome.

Steph glad for your positive experience. The truth is Houzz is NOT the good guy! During these times we are less tolerant of unfairness. No one begrudges practices that allow a company to make a profit if they did not we would not have the service they provide. Some overstep and get greedy, Houzz falls here. Just my opinion, I don’t do Facebook which heads the bad guy list. We often have to live with companies and people who put their personal financial success above all else. Facebook and Houzz will never be in the good guy lane but currently we still have free choice so can participate in their services or not depending on our tolerance level. Unfortunately our world rewards the bad guys as well as the good.

Austinkisses what are you even talking about? This is a browser issue, has nothing to do with Houzz limiting the GW/ Rose forums.

As you can tell, Houzz is a hot button for me, and my assumption (possibly incorrect) is that this is more than a browser issue ... relax no argument from me on this Dingo

Certainly these big companies with their “users” have been monetizing the users like crazy with AI technology. My DH’s daughter works for an AI company writing code for AI. She says your every move online is being watched and this mostly due to technology advances with AI. So I feel it too, but of course it’s a different issue than if the Houzz website is working or not. Still good to be informed. If you have Netflix, “The Social Dilemma” documentary is a real eye opener!

Agree Seph, the documentary was not surprising but still scary.

Interesting Note: I have a friend who was outside in conversation and mentioned a city name. Her phone was inside the house. She and the others heard her phone speak an Alexia type description of the city with- population, location, etc. She did not have that function turned on, in fact the phone was turned off and charging. The group (professors) and she thought it was strange, so they went it and checked. It was turned off and charging. She is a reliable source, not in any way an alarmist or weird.

THEY are always watching.... and I surely bore them to tears but the rest of you be careful. :))

I too can not search anything in roses . only Discussions page comes .

Did you try going through gardenweb?

I emailed Houzz and they recommended using Chrome for your browser.

I use a Chrome browser on my laptop and I can't get search options for any individual forum/s to appear when I search, whether I'm on a discussion page or the main page of the Antique Roses forum.

So, for example if I type in 'Buff Beauty' Or 'Buff Beauty Rose' I get given 6 options only:

Discussions (meaning all discussions from all forums)

Photos

Shop

Find a Pro

Stories

Users

Selecting 'Discussions' gets me one item from 15 years ago about companion planting for BB from a forum called 'Other', and lots of items from random home decor forums about buff paint being beautiful, etc... If I add the word 'Antique' to the search I get thousands of things about buff coloured antiques, or buffing up antique items... or other useless stuff...

Vapourvac - how do you search through GardenWeb? I don't know whether I'm doing that already or not. I didn't think GW still existed.

I use chrome on my phone and don't have a problem..on a Samsung Note9

I should b using Firefox less ads..but old habits..lol

I use latest version of Chrome and it's still a problem.

I sent you a message, comtesse.

I went to the Antique Rose forum and in the search at the top of the window I typed in Buff Beauty. This is the options

When I select..Buff Beauty in Antique Roses, this is what comes up..

This is what pops up when I search Buff Beauty from the antique Rose's . It did have 2 rose discussions at the top but the rest were paint discussions etc..

I've just run into the issue also. I'm wondering if certain discussion categories allow you to subsearch while others do not? Another approach could be to try to learn the URL syntax after doing a "within subject" search. That's how I find roses in A reverence for roses that are in stock, because their format is super annoying.

hate to post this again as I'm afraid they'll close this back door.

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/roses

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/rosesant

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/rosesorg

I went through my browser history to see how a search link looks like.

Here is one link like that:

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/antique-roses/query/buff-beauty

Copy it and change buff beauty for whatever you want. It looks like links still work, it's just the search box not suggesting antique roses as an option.

Perfect! Thank you @Edhelka (North Wales, UK)!!!!

The above links I posted are to the old gardenweb where one can directly look up information. They are also more user-friendly in general . Thank you for another way using who's, edelka.

Did anyone ever find an answer to this issue? I read through all of the posts and nothing works for me. When I am in the rose forum and try to search in the search box it only searches ALL discussions instead of just the rose forum. Didn't used to be this way. Thanks.

If I am looking for old discussions on HOUZZ on a specific rose, I just use Google, and they usually show up there. I even do that when Amazon produces no or irrelevant results when I am looking for something. I don't know why, but 50% of the time, Google finds an Amazon link with whatever I am looking for.

Jackie

cltroses, Roses is a gardenweb.com forum, not a Houzz forum, so maybe that's why a search doesn't work on Houzz for some people. I use gardenweb.com on Firefox and the search function works fine for me.

@woodrose HOUZZ purchased gardenweb years ago. It makes no difference whether you access the forums using gardenweb.com or houzz.com as they both take you to the same URL. They are all HOUZZ forums, no matter what the subject. I have kept the gardenweb address in my bookmarks for more than a decade and it's the one I type in when needed because it IS what the forums always have been to me. Jackie's suggestion of using Google is likely the better one as it often seems to work better than the HOUZZ search (or anything else HOUZZ touches).

I search on the browsers firefox or duck duck go and I include houzz in the search. That seems to do a decent job.

Kim Said:

" . . . gardenweb . . . IS what the forums always have been to me."

*** And to me.

Houzz was a huge step down.

After trying out google and mailing Houzz support I must say that I am very disappointed. It's a forum specific search function, putting it back on should be easy. It's been more than 2 months and I wish we could lobby them somehow to put the search back on how it was :( .

@flame_master the forums ONLY exist to advertise HOUZZ and those who pay HOUZZ to advertise their wares. Changing the search to include everything instead of forum specific increases the exposure of all the "stuff" they are paid to advertise. The only "lobbying" that might have any influence would be if we were willing to pay them MORE to use the forums than the ad dollars total. If you don't pay for the service, YOU ARE the product.

How did I do this?

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/query/%E2%80%98just-joey%E2%80%9D/nqrw

The first 3 pages of search results are all about Just Joey, the rose. Nothing else.

Just Just Joey. And I did it by going to gardenweb.com (thank you vaporvac) and typing just joey in the search box. At gardenweb.com. Without first navigating to the rose forum. And without going to Google or a competitor.

For all I know, all 2000+ results are all about Just Joey, the rose. I didn’t have patience to check past the third page.

This did not allow me to restrict my search to the rose forum, but the search was restricted to gardenweb. The results were pretty good, non?

I'm very very sorry to say that Kim is absolutely correct.

Nor do I think there's much we can do about it.

If you are not Facebook-averse, I'd suggest that the forum Paul Zimmerman maintains there on rose gardening has a good breadth of experience to offer and (Miracle of Miracles) I've never seen any nastiness.

We have a wonderful community here, but HOUZZ does not value it.

Here’s another example. Again without going to Google or other similiar site.

Rather, by typing gardenweb.com in the address box, and then entering the search term (in this case, “Mr. Lincoln”) in the search box at gardenweb.com. The first option presented is to search “Mr. Lincoln in Gardenweb“. Which yields:

https://www.gardenweb.com/discussions/query/%E2%80%98mr.-lincoln%E2%80%99/nqrw

As you can see, over 2000 gardenweb Rose forum discussions on Mr. Lincoln, the rose. And you can arrange them by ”latest”, ”relevance”, ”unanswered” or ”popular”. Just like before.

Well here is the workaround I use now. It might not work for long because Houzz can force links to redirected.

After doing the search, modify the address by adding /roses/ after the /discussions.

eg:

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/query/prince/nqrw

In this search, simply add /roses after the /discussions like below

https://www.houzz.com/discussions/roses/query/prince/nqrw

Looking at the problem from the programmers view, what do they have to gain if everything works like it should? Nothing…. ie they get fired. Now if they have to continuously fix problems and/or direct you to HOUZZ…. nuff said….

Just chiming in that I totally HATE the Houzz search now and usually use Google to pull up old threads. Maybe Houzz is run by my awful internet company that I am 200% firing as soon as I get a new company in place! I have been inconsistently on the forum because our internet has been awful for almost a year. Ugh. And my daughter’s online school takes internet precedence over all other activiteis. Here’s to better times in 2022 and a HUGE raspberry to the Houzz search engine, lumbering behemoth barreling like a runaway train on the wrong track. Carol