Hi all,

We're working on some search improvements which are live on our community here, and we'd love for you to test it and let us know what you think. Feel free to have a poke around and evaluate the quality of the results. Let us know how you get on.

Thanks!

Matt

Great!

Did 3 searches that I did the past weeks looking for some very specific things.

Previously Google did a better job at getting me that, but now searching here I get right away what I needed.

11 minutes ago, -FP said:

Great!

Did 3 searches that I did the past weeks looking for some very specific things.

Previously Google did a better job at getting me that, but now searching here I get right away what I needed.

Thanks! That's great to hear.

I tested in one word and in two words - the result contains exactly what I am looking for.
I also tried searching for members with only three entered letters - a very fast and astonishingly accurate result.

Now search is working very well - I think

From initial impression search looks good, but I have noticed that in Activity Stream, there are repeated items. My settings are on show "Items only":

 

Commerce? 

3 hours ago, DannyPhantom said:

Commerce? 

crickets

7 hours ago, jair101 said:

I have noticed that in Activity Stream, there are repeated items.

Same here.

The search is way too specific. For example, I know I posted in a topic about excluding ignored users from the activity stream. Trying to find that topic was really hard because I needed the exact words.

Example:

Ignored Users Activity Stream = results contained my topic

ignore users activity stream = results didn't contain my topic

ignored user activity stream = results didn't contain my topic

ignore activity stream = results didn't contain my topic

11 hours ago, jair101 said:

in Activity Stream, there are repeated items. My settings are on show "Items only":

 

I'm also seeing read posts in the results of the AS when another new post is made

3 hours ago, Chris027 said:

The search is way too specific. For example, I know I posted in a topic about excluding ignored users from the activity stream. Trying to find that topic was really hard because I needed the exact words.

Example:

Ignored Users Activity Stream = results contained my topic

ignore users activity stream = results didn't contain my topic

ignored user activity stream = results didn't contain my topic

ignore activity stream = results didn't contain my topic

If you click this, do you get the result you were looking for?

19 hours ago, jair101 said:

From initial impression search looks good, but I have noticed that in Activity Stream, there are repeated items. My settings are on show "Items only":

 

I thought I was going mad but glad to see others noticed it.

BTW, I was always thinking about the question: Who really needs this view, showing every posting of a topic? ?

6 hours ago, Mark said:

If you click this, do you get the result you were looking for?

Now when I search for the exact title of the topic I was trying to find, it doesn't appear in the search results. 

 

My search terms - Exclude Ignored Users From Activity Stream

 

the topic - 

 

Just now, Chris027 said:

Now when I search for the exact title of the topic I was trying to find, it doesn't appear in the search results. 

 

My search terms - Exclude Ignored Users From Activity Stream

 

the topic - 

 

 

In your screenshot please take note of the message above the search input box

Just ran a search across all content for "humanities".

First result returned was:

Which has one reference to "humanity's".

Second result returned was:

Which had one reference to "human".

Third result returned:

One reference to "human".

Now, I know for a fact that I have used the word "humanities" in my own previous posts (as in "arts & humanities").  And it is only when I narrow the search using my author name that those posts come up.  Which, of course, I shouldn't have to do.

So judging from that....

 

1 hour ago, liquidfractal said:

Just ran a search across all content for "humanities".

First result returned was:

Which has one reference to "humanity's".

Second result returned was:

Which had one reference to "human".

Third result returned:

One reference to "human".

Now, I know for a fact that I have used the word "humanities" in my own previous posts (as in "arts & humanities").  And it is only when I narrow the search using my author name that those posts come up.  Which, of course, I shouldn't have to do.

So judging from that....

 

We're actually testing a stemming feature here, so that is as intended to a degree.

I think one tangential point that @liquidfractal brought up is the bias in search results for our own content.  For example, I also test searched for content I knew I wrote about but my results were down in the results.  

12 hours ago, Matt said:

We're actually testing a stemming feature here, so that is as intended to a degree.

Does mysql support stemming search or is IPS using a 3rd party search engine?

12 hours ago, Matt said:

We're actually testing a stemming feature here, so that is as intended to a degree.

Will stemming feature work for English only? 

@jair101 / @Square Wheels / @PPlanet Thanks, duplicates should be fixed now (it's rebuilding again now)

@DannyPhantom / @amator / @RevengeFNF / @Sonya* We're just playing around with some ideas now and using this site as a test bed because there's lots of data. We'll let you know about our plans in the News area once we've finished our experimentation

@Chris027 Thanks for providing that information. It looks like the decay on older content was a bit too aggressive. I'm going to tweak it a bit.

@optrexnz Can you provide a screenshot?

@Apfelstrudel Lots of people like to see a stream of all content, all posts included  

@liquidfractal Thanks, I'll take a look into that. It looks like you might be experiencing the same issue with the over-aggressive time-based decay, but I'll do some more research.

@Joel R You can always filter by author if you know whose content you're looking for, but it sounds like in these examples there's further tweaking to be done.

I've tweaked the time decay algorithm. Let me know if you have any good examples of where you're trying to find something and it's not showing up.

9 hours ago, Mark said:

I've tweaked the time decay algorithm. Let me know if you have any good examples of where you're trying to find something and it's not showing up.

Ok: Once again, I ran a search on all content for a word I know I've written: "educator".

First result:

"education," but not "educator."

#2:

Again it has "education" only.

#3:

has "educational."

 

Long story short, my two posts with "educator" highlighted in the search results came in at #5 and #11, which is somewhat curious.

Hope this helps!

@liquidfractal Can you provide the link to the post you were expecting to find (for example, by using filtering by author)? 

58 minutes ago, Mark said:

@liquidfractal Can you provide the link to the post you were expecting to find (for example, by using filtering by author)? 

The first one (i.e. the one in position #6) is here:

 

The other one (which comes in position #12) is here:

These were the posts I expected to find at the top of the list, but could only see them at the top by filtering by my author name.