XF 2.2 About the quality of search results?

Robert9

Well-known member
Have you ever tried to find add-ons to use for upgrades?
Try it!

You will find some results and some more results from AndyB, because he has always the the text "Premium upgrade: ..." in his description.
More or less none of the these results are interesting to me, when searching for something with "upgrades".

I have no idea about how to program a search engine; my knowledge ends after select * from xyz where lala like '%lulu%'
But we are in 2023 and maybe there are some more clever heads than me, who have some ideas how to get rid of such non-relevant results?

If you watch these results, you will find on page 4 some relevant results, also on 5.

This one you will find on page 6


Two more of xen-soluce on page 7

Dragonbyte on page 8

One more from xen-soluce on page 9

Xon and niftyfifty on page 10


Finally almost all results of AndyB should be removed here to have a better result.

(This is only an example! No offense meant!)

But how something like this could be done?
With the power of the crowd? Maybe, but this also is an open door for people to attack other people.

Maybe with the counting of clicks? Because here, many people will click the correct search results only.

I have no other or better ideas, but it seams to me, that the count of clicks would be a good start, especially if we care for more things to avoid scripted clicks.


Maybe you have other/better ideas?


Yes, my dear! You should search in the tiles only!
Really?
Watch the results for yourself!
 
Seems to be a decent search using title only search in resources only for the term user upgrade.

Unless I’m misunderstanding your question

It is odd though that a title only search does also return results from descriptions
 
Have you ever tried to find add-ons

I've complained about that before.

Poor search results in the Resource Manager


Other search issues I've had:

Searching should allow hits to actual forums

Changes to Search Options - add Threads and Sorting


If you really want to change the game I think there should be editable LANDING pages for key searches.


Another idea is just put the wiki, gallery, forum, resource, whichever content type you want - at the top (see image below).


xenforo-search-wiki-and-forums-appear-first-jpg.144781
 
Have you ever tried to find add-ons to use for upgrades?
Try it!

You will find some results and some more results from AndyB, because he has always the the text "Premium upgrade: ..." in his description.
More or less none of the these results are interesting to me, when searching for something with "upgrades".

I have no idea about how to program a search engine; my knowledge ends after select * from xyz where lala like '%lulu%'
But we are in 2023 and maybe there are some more clever heads than me, who have some ideas how to get rid of such non-relevant results?

If you watch these results, you will find on page 4 some relevant results, also on 5.

This one you will find on page 6


Two more of xen-soluce on page 7

Dragonbyte on page 8

One more from xen-soluce on page 9

Xon and niftyfifty on page 10


Finally almost all results of AndyB should be removed here to have a better result.

(This is only an example! No offense meant!)

But how something like this could be done?
With the power of the crowd? Maybe, but this also is an open door for people to attack other people.

Maybe with the counting of clicks? Because here, many people will click the correct search results only.

I have no other or better ideas, but it seams to me, that the count of clicks would be a good start, especially if we care for more things to avoid scripted clicks.


Maybe you have other/better ideas?


Yes, my dear! You should search in the tiles only!
Really?
Watch the results for yourself!
 
When I ask to have better search results; there are maybe some nice answers like: Hey, use Google!

But it is not to have better search results for me, it is about having better search results for any normal user.
Can you imagine telling your users: "Hey, the search in our forum is not so wonderful, please use Google instead!"
 
Hey, the search in our forum is not so wonderful, please use Google instead!"
I give them the option of a Google search but of course that will only find what is indexable. I have quite a lot of noindex content.
 
Last edited:
This is not my intense here.
My question is: What programmers (and/or the crowd) could do to have better search results.


Examples:

You have ten good users in your forum, users you trust.
Then we give them permission to manipulate a search weight.

Or

You give all the people the permission and two buttons for +1/-1
Every time they have a search and see some stupid results, they can vote down this result.

Or

you can measure which results are clicked very often, and which results are never clicked.
And you can measure the time what happens on the next page.

Search for love:

click on page one: people stay average 5 minutes
click on page two: people stay average of 5 seconds.

Result: page one seems more interesting than page two


I am just interested if people here have some nice ideas, what could be done to have a better search.
I am not interested in how to use the search we have in a better way.

I don't want to discuss single ideas. I just want to know if the world (you all) have some ideas to collect.
 
But it is not to have better search results for me, it is about having better search results for any normal user.

This is the key. Better search for normal users.

The answer lies in this: What are normal users searching for on your site !

Admins dont even know because xenforo searches aren't saved.

I'll bet google saves what you are searching for as that is VERY useful information about what information to present to you.

If you knew what people wanted to find, you'd be able to make that information more accessible.

There are two paths:

  • better search without data collecting.
  • better search with data collecting.
 
Are you certain? I guess there was an add-on to log search terms ...
But more interesting could be, what users do with the results.
 
Social media presents you the information you probably want to view WITHOUT you searching.

How often do you search for things on Social Media ?
Reddit searching on the mobile app is fairly cumbersome.
 
This looks interesting

 
another ?

 
A more advanced implementation of Elastic Search would be very welcome. Elastic has nice functionality currently unavailable for xenforo. See the xfes suggestions forum for some of them.
 
And one of these cares for better results, when you have someone in your forum starting a text for resources 676 times with

Premium upgrade:

This XF2 add-on along with the entire collection can be ...

Or cares about the next step after showing results?
Or cares for the different use of "upgrade" in "how to upgrade an add-on", "user account upgrade", "upgrade xenforo to version {x}", "premium upgrade"?
 
A more advanced implementation of Elastic Search would be very welcome. Elastic has nice functionality currently unavailable for xenforo. See the xfes suggestions forum for some of them.
Such as utilizing the phonetic search abilities available in ES, since so many Internet users have poor spelling and blame us forum owners because our search results suck vs. Google's. (I have always wanted to say, "Send me tens of millions of dollars and I'll create another Google. Just. For. You. To search the forum.)

It's only installing and configuring a plugin on your ES installation to activate it there, and then it would need some coding for XFES to add it to the index.

That's a "missing link" other forums don't have as of yet, that I know of.
 
Top Bottom