removing sphinx hurts...

[StRiANON1]

Really need to have support for external search engine.

The best of is Cirrussearch (for example Wikipedia chose it instead of Sphinx and this engine really very good and powerful).

I hope, that support for Cirrussearch will be added in IPS4 and urge to do it  

[SJ77]

It's really difficult to search for stuff. I hope something is done about this soon.

[Lindy]

On 12/2/2016 at 3:05 PM, superj707 said:

It's really difficult to search for stuff. I hope something is done about this soon.

We do plan external search, but please elaborate on why it's difficult to search. Perhaps it's something we can improve upon in the short-term.

[RevengeFNF]

10 hours ago, Lindy said:

We do plan external search, but please elaborate on why it's difficult to search. Perhaps it's something we can improve upon in the short-term.

Hello Lindy. What do you mean with External Search? External services?

I don't have elaborated a lot what is happening, i just know my members are searching thing on my site using Google instead of the internal search functionality. With Sphinx in IPB 3.4, it was not happening.

[Ryan Ashbrook]

On 12/2/2016 at 3:05 PM, superj707 said:

It's really difficult to search for stuff. I hope something is done about this soon.

I use our search all the time (just ask about the term Roogle ), so if you can elaborate that would be great.

[BN_IT_Support]

The fact that it doesn't properly index Pages or Commerce renders it pretty useless for me.  Getting the existing system to index the full suite would be a big step forward.

[SJ77]

Also if you don't know exactly what you are searching for it's not very good at finding things.  Example: searching for a thread about "Anabelle" type in "Annabelle"  (cause you forgot that she spells her name differently. No chance of finding it. Example @Lindy

[SJ77]

Here is another example that you can test right here on this site.  there is a thread called  "Add option for using Emojis instead of Emoticons to the ACP"

If you could only remember the general idea of the thread (as opposed to the exact wording) you might search for "instead of emoticons use emojis"  <-- test it. The thread we are looking for does not come up in the results at all.

 

See Attached: Google finds it right away. IPB's own search cannot find the thread!

@Lindy

 

[Simon Woods]

What @superj707 has posted has actually been said before so now I'm wondering if IPS actually considers this to be a problem at all or if it has somehow slipped through the cracks as a problem to solve; either way this does not look good at all. How can you not, in this day and age, consider problems with your search engine to not be important enough to prioritise?

[Lindy]

Google is a search engine that's not stuck within the confines of MySQL. I would certainly hope Google produces amazing search results since they're a search company.

You are inputting bad data and expecting MySQL to "figure it out" like Google does. If you type "emojis emoticons" it's the top result. If you type "using emojis instead of emoticons" it's the top result. You're typing "instead of emoticons use emojis." That's not what the topic is and while I agree it would be ideal to figure out what you meant (incidentally, if you click "OR" it will do a better job) - MySQL is never going to be a Google level search engine.

If you have more examples, we're happy to do what we can until external search is available. I'll also log a topic internally to see if there's anything we can do for those who get a bit more... verbose with their search queries but miss the keywords. 

[RevengeFNF]

Mysql search only finds the exact words you are searching. If you search for a word or a string, if it finds it shows, if it doesn't find, does not show anything. This is the biggest limitation of IPS suite right now.

I believe it can be solved using powerful search tool's like Sphinx or Elasticsearch. It can also be solved using cloud solutions like Amazon Cloudsearch, but this one will only solve the issue for the ones that have the money to spend on it.

Right now the best solution is to use Google to search the content on our site.

4 minutes ago, Lindy said:

You are inputting bad data and expecting MySQL to "figure it out" like Google does. If you type "emojis emoticons" it's the top result. If you type "using emojis instead of emoticons" it's the top result. You're typing "instead of emoticons use emojis." That's not what the topic is and while I agree it would be ideal to figure out what you meant (incidentally, if you click "OR" it will do a better job) - MySQL is never going to be a Google level search engine.

Lindy, the majority of people does not remember the exact words of a topic. It happened to me many times on my own forum, where i have 100% sure that a topic exists but i simple can't find it, and i waste 30 minutes trying many combinations or single words in the search without results.

IPS is not a Search Company, no one is expecting IPS to develop an algorithm that will be the saint grail of the search engines. But there are Search Tool's available that IPS can use, and they are free. No one expects IPS to reinvent the wheel.

[SJ77]

Quote

It happened to me many times on my own forum, where i have 100% sure that a topic exist but i simply can't find it, and i waste 30 minutes trying many combinations or single words in the search without results.

I can confirm that this has been my EXACT experience as well. I was asked to explain why it's difficult. This would be it. It's hardly usable if it can't be a bit smarter.

[Lindy]

You don't need to remember the whole topic. In this case, I would personally search for "emojis emoticons" and it comes right up. Admittedly, I do the same with Google. I don't type elaborate phrases in any search engine... maybe I'm unique? If you need to use a longer phrase, try clicking the OR and see if that improves the results you're looking for. If you have suggestions on how we can make that more obvious or intuitive, we're definitely open.

We all now agree external search is something that needs to happen... and it will, likely next year sometime. 

[RevengeFNF]

@Lindy but what do you mean by external search? An external tool that we install on our server like Elasticsearch or an External Cloud solution like Amazon Cloudsearch?

You know we care about that because one is free and the other is expensive.

[Lindy]

Just now, RevengeFNF said:

@Lindy but what do you mean by external search? An external tool that we install on our server like Elasticsearch or an External Cloud solution like Amazon Cloudsearch?

You know we care about that because one is free and the other is expensive.

It will most likely be elasticsearch.

[RevengeFNF]

Just now, Lindy said:

It will most likely be elasticsearch.

Now you need to convince the Head Developer, @Matt coff coff, that "most likely" means "for sure" 

[Machsterdaemon]

1 hour ago, superj707 said:

Here is another example that you can test right here on this site.  there is a thread called  "Add option for using Emojis instead of Emoticons to the ACP"

If you could only remember the general idea of the thread (as opposed to the exact wording) you might search for "instead of emoticons use emojis"  <-- test it. The thread we are looking for does not come up in the results at all.

I did test this and it did work. I found the topic right here on this IPS site you found easily on Google but not here on this site:

"Add option for usingEmojis instead of Emoticons to the ACP"

This is what I did:

Search term:
instead of emoticons use emojis

Content Type:
Topics

Find results in:
Content titles only

Find results that:
Contain any of my search term words

Last Updated:
Last Year

Screenshot of results:

[SJ77]

Not sure what I am doing wrong this. I just tried even using your advance search suggestions.

EDIT: got your example to work for me. Requires searching using advanced options which I usually don't do. I just use the main search box.

 

 

[sudo]

2 hours ago, RevengeFNF said:

@Lindy but what do you mean by external search? An external tool that we install on our server like Elasticsearch or an External Cloud solution like Amazon Cloudsearch?

You know we care about that because one is free and the other is expensive.

Cloudsearch isnt really the ideal product I suspect although I have only had a brief glance at it however AWS supports Elasticseach as a managed service: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticsearch-service/latest/developerguide/what-is-amazon-elasticsearch-service.html

That way you can choose where you want to host the service

[Tracy Perry]

4 hours ago, Lindy said:

MySQL is never going to be a Google level search engine.

 

And I think that is one of the points people are bearing down on.  By restricting it to MySQL search only and not having a replacement for Sphinx, IPS really screwed the pooch, like going from pen & paper to stone tablet and bronze hammer & chisel.  Sphinx should have (IMHO) been left in until there was a valid and active replacement for it.

And as has been discussed elsewhere, there needs to be more content types (custom fields, etc) indexed in the search process.

[StRiANON1]

On 02.12.2016 at 1:20 PM, StRiANON1 said:

Cirrussearch

 

On 06.12.2016 at 0:01 AM, Lindy said:

It will most likely be elasticsearch

I was wrong and mixed up with mediawiki's extension name, engine name is elasticsearch and so if it will be choised as external engine for ipb - it will be damn right choice!

But... when?)

[Simon Woods]

2 hours ago, StRiANON1 said:

But... when?

Look at Lindy's last post before the one you quoted.

[StRiANON1]

"next year sometime" - it is not an answer.

Normal search is very important. There is one big trouble, that for searching we must enter exact word - not something similar or just part of a word. As a result, for big communities, we can't find all data, that can be helpful. Which is seriously not ok.

[Summit360]

I'm not sure why this is such a lengthy delay though. In development though. One does simply not remove a huge feature without a plan, well ok... Was it really a pain leaving the option in place for those of us with a few million posts or more?

Search was never been that good anyway so I'm not upset When we moved to IPB in 200# from vb, most of the early complaints were about search and that continued till recently*. Search maybe isn't that important in social media, maybe that's the influence, error. I've removed the emphasis in guidelines on searching before asking again  

*I've been pushing people to a google search page and I'm still on 3.4; the last of the ipb sites I own. I've been putting off migrating, dropping *search service* news was a  moment. Now the sands of time are nearly out. I'm replacing my public search links to my hosted google search page, actually quite handy.

You can set up watches and for key phrases, put suggestions in. e.g. tyres for winter, I can prompt you to view the tyres for winter topic, before the results. Zero cost inc the hosting via github pages for a static html page, plus income from the ads . Going to do a duckduck one too. One has to have options, in case google decide to drop their search engine. 

HTH.

[Koper74]

On 5.12.2016 at 10:01 PM, Lindy said:

It will most likely be elasticsearch.

Finally there is a solution on the horizon. And this would be the best one!