Search - Feedback on Survey

[Optic14]

Hi there @Lindy asked me to follow up with more detail on search feedback so thought I'd do it on the forums here.

I just have just three suggestions.

 

1. Relevancy of results

Search needs to be more forgiving and suggest alternate terms or corrected terms if a typo is made. I think visitors can be turned off if they have no results returned but might be better encouraged if it suggests an alternate term.

e.g. something like this:

Also it needs a stemming analyzer (something Elasticsearch has) to match variations of words. e.g. test vs tested vs testing. All these return vastly different results on IPS whereas IMO they should return similar results.

 

2. Presentation of Search Results and Interface

It needs to be more simple. The quick-search itself is fine but if a member wants to filter their results further it should be easy, currently you are overwhelmed by a page full of advanced search options on IPS.

One approach I like is the way Threadloom has done their results:
https://www.homesteadingtoday.com/threadloom/search?query=homesteading

The searchable content types are in tabs:

And you can easily filter further using the options just below the search box:

 

I also really like the way image results are presented in a grid here, whereas on IPS they are presented using the Activity Feed template, a row for each image which can lead to long scrolling of pages.

It also lets you toggle the details of the image results:

 

Maybe on IPS image results can use the same template as IP.Gallery ?

 

3. Quicksearch should always be set to Everything

This is just my opinion, and may differ from community to community. I think the Quicksearch should automatically search "Everything" no matter what content type you're viewing. The feedback I've been getting is on my community rarely do my members want to search within a thread, they're using it to quickly navigate to other content and constantly have to change the content type search to "Everything."

[KentT]

For #3, how about a setting where the Admin can set the default scope of the Quick Search? That would allow a bit.more tailoring for unique sites, without becoming overly complex. I like how it currently lets you change scope in Quick Search

Otherwise, I am loving your thoughts about enhancements.

[Joel R]

Here are real problems I have with search:

• Searching related names but variations on spelling: "Aaron Brückner" vs "Aaron Brueckner" vs "Aaron Bruckner"
• Better Filtering by Content Type: Make it faster to live filter by content types. I don't want to mess with Advanced Search options in the age of Google.  

[PPlanet]

I'd need the system to be able to search customs fields across the board, third party apps, etc. just like it was possible using 3.4. It's been requested already; hopefully it's implemented.

[Sonya*]

Please, make the search faster for large boards. We have over 8 millions posts in board, lot of blog entries, images in gallery, millions of comments. We are using sphinx on 3.4 with no performance issue. Actually we cannot upgrage as the search on the test server with 4.2 takes over 2 minutes.