XF 1.1 Horrible Search Engine?

[xIsabel38]

I'm trying to find stuff using the search features of this site and I realize, the search is horrid. Like seriously bad.​

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Let me explain. Say I was looking for BBC type add-ons.​

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Here at xenforo.com under the Resources go to search and try to search for BBC. You get nothing related to BBC add-ons. Even if you search title only.​

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Or if I'm looking for a Media type resource and I search for "Media" I get nothing related to media resources.​

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How about this as an example. We all know xenporta is the most popular download here right? So go to the Resources and try to search for "xen".​

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You won't see a single xenporta/carta/medio, etc... add-on in the list.​

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I'm using the search the way I imagine any average user would use any search feature. This is how I search forums, wikis, sites, etc...​

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Sometimes I find what I'm looking for but with xenForo, it seems like most of the time, I don't. Even if I know it exists.​

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Maybe, it's just me and it's all in my head.​

 

[kkm323]

I do agree, I did couple of searches using the default search engine in this forum and I couldn't find anything relevant. I love XenForo, every aspect of it, except the search engine it doesn't help me at all. The elasticsearch version made it better but not the best. Members in here can get technical as they want, but in the end users wants relevant result.

 

[Sadik B]

Hey Isabel. Actually the problem you are facing is because partial searches don't work here. I am assuming that is because the search index indexes whole words and cannot search by partial matches unless one happens to use wildcards. I agree most common folks would not know about how to use wildcards. But it is a limitation of almost every software system. We are just spoiled by Google!

So it would work if you search by whole words, but not if you search by partial words. And your slippers are lovely!

 

[kkm323]

We are just spoiled by Google!

With respect to your you and your post, I think google didn't spoil as much as making our life easier. I think xenforo should include google or bing as an alternative in the cpanel as options. Its simple as that. elasticsearch didn't help at all I can tell from using xenforo.com daily[/quote]

 

[Naatan]

With respect to your you and your post, I think google didn't spoil as much as making our life easier. I think xenforo should include google or bing as an alternative in the cpanel as options. Its simple as that. elasticsearch didn't help at all I can tell from using xenforo.com daily

[/quote]

Google can only index public information, seeing as much of the stuff that you search on with an XF forum is managed by permissions it wouldn't really apply.

 

[xIsabel38]

I'm not sure why you are getting in attack mode, I don't get the impression anyone here is defending XenForo beyond reason, we're just trying to give you solutions and explain why things are the way they are. Would you rather just have us say "you're right, it sucks" and be done with it? We're not here to hate on the software we love, simple as that.

For your example searching for "BBC", as said earlier in this thread if you want to search using wildcards you have to clearly indicate the wildcard using "*", I agree this is not very user friendly but it's a compromise the devs made in favour of performance. When you do wildcard searches on a database it takes a very heavy toll on performance as it needs to analyze every single row in the table you are performing the query on, now combine this with the amount of searches happening on a high profile forum and you are basically spending over half your resources generating search results. Simply by choosing to make the compromise to require wildcards to be explicitly formulated you can negate a lot of that performance loss. Basically SMF compromised performance in favour of usability and XF compromised usability in favour of performance.

Now this is a good explanation. See your other one to me sounded like it was sarcastic because you began talking about terms like artifical intelligence which we both know doesn't exist in searches thus why it appeared sarcastic to me.

The wildcard thing makes sense in terms of what you have explained. But in this case, how is 99% of the world supposed to know that? I looked through the search and the advanced search link and didn't see a single term about using * as a wildcard. Maybe I missed it?

When I search anything, I type keywords or letters I want to populate. Say you are looking for a song that begins as "Let my...." but you have no idea the rest, so you search "Let my" or "Music or Song Let my" and with xF, you would never find the result even if it was there a million times.

I have to assume most average users like myself, will not find what they need either. I read something a while back that reported that the average user searches for something 2 to 3 times before they give up on it and move to a different search or worse, a different search site. It's a cause of concern to me as my website is a wiki/database heavily heavily dependent on a search engine. Obviously, I'm not talking about using xF to power the search, as I'm going to go with a PHP or Perl search engine, but I am looking into the search abilities of all the software I'm using.

I will be using the wildcard * to find things I need in the resources area, but I think the devs could have maybe included text near the search bar that says "* = Wildcard".

 

[Naatan]

Now this is a good explanation. See your other one to me sounded like it was sarcastic because you began talking about terms like artifical intelligence which we both know doesn't exist in searches thus why it appeared sarcastic to me.

It wasn't sarcastic, as a programmer I just often deal with people that have no idea of what is technically possible, seeing as I don't really know you I played it safe and made sure you knew AI was not a reality.. my apologies if I offended you.

You're totally right about the wildcards not being intuitive, although I personally don't have a problem with the compromise they could definitely add some sort of tooltip to the search field to make this easier for users. Again though XF is still very young software and it's this kind of stuff that gets polished with user feedback, which you are now providing Now we just need the devs to actually come out of hibernation and read some of this

 

[xIsabel38]

Hey Isabel. Actually the problem you are facing is because partial searches don't work here. I am assuming that is because the search index indexes whole words and cannot search by partial matches unless one happens to use wildcards. I agree most common folks would not know about how to use wildcards. But it is a limitation of almost every software system. We are just spoiled by Google!

So it would work if you search by whole words, but not if you search by partial words. And your slippers are lovely!

Yeah, that was a real burden for me. Thankfully I learned about the Wildcard thing from several people so I now know a somewhat better way to find what I'm looking for.

And lmao about the slippers. I need to change this pic, it's past overdue.

 

[xIsabel38]

It wasn't sarcastic, as a programmer I just often deal with people that have no idea of what is technically possible, seeing as I don't really know you I played it safe and made sure you knew AI was not a reality.. my apologies if I offended you.

You're totally right about the wildcards not being intuitive, although I personally don't have a problem with the compromise they could definitely add some sort of tooltip to the search field to make this easier for users. Again though XF is still very young software and it's this kind of stuff that gets polished with user feedback, which you are now providing Now we just need the devs to actually come out of hibernation and read some of this

Meh, I'm a Spanish Jersey girl so that's just double the *****iness. Maybe I just read out of context, sorry.

 

[Naatan]

Meh, I'm a Spanish Jersey girl so that's just double the *****iness. Maybe I just read out of context, sorry.

It's all good

 

[tenants]

So, from what I've read (unless I've misunderstood)

The main complaint is that the default search doesn't include wildcards...
I'm not sure it should use wildcards by default (for performance reasons on large boards), but it does sound like a fairly simple plug-in to do...

 

[CTXMedia]

Isabel, and this isn't a sarcastic response, why not suggest the idea of a "partial match" search option to the development team?

There's a forum for making suggestions - here - and this one may be useful, from a user perspective, for lots of forum owners and users. You could suggest they either make the default mode a "wildcard/partial match" search, or suggest that an option is added in the admin area to turn this on for those site owners who wish to use it.

The reason I've linked to the Big Feature suggestions forum is because I think this might need a re-working of the underlying search framework, but it is a good suggestion so I think you should make it.

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[xIsabel38]

Isabel, and this isn't a sarcastic response, why not suggest the idea of a "partial match" search option to the development team?

There's a forum for making suggestions - here - and this one may be useful, from a user perspective, for lots of forum owners and users. You could suggest they either make the default mode a "wildcard/partial match" search, or suggest that an option is added in the admin area to turn this on for those site owners who wish to use it.

The reason I've linked to the Big Feature suggestions forum is because I think this might need a re-working of the underlying search framework, but it is a good suggestion so I think you should make it.

Cheers,
Shaun

Honestly, because I didn't know what exactly was wrong with the search engine until after this post was made and the people responded. I just thought it downright sucked. I knew nothing of wildcards or things like that.

 

[CTXMedia]

Honestly, because I didn't know what exactly was wrong with the search engine until after this post was made and the people responded. I just thought it downright sucked. I knew nothing of wildcards or things like that.

Still, it's a good suggestion because you're looking at it from a different perspective to us "techies" who've been around the block and know our way around forum searches - you're effectively putting forward and describing and end-user experience that you think could be improved and that's really good feedback (albeit with a Jersey-girl attitude ... ).

 

[xIsabel38]

(albeit with a Jersey-girl attitude ... ).

 

[CTXMedia]

... brilliant.

 

[Digital Doctor]

The biggest drawback of posts, threads, and forums is information gets lost ... all too easily.
This is the opposite of a wiki where things are easier to find, but ... and it's a big but, people don't contribute to wikis.

As people say, forum searching doesn't give people what they want.

I think improving search would be "very easy". To be truthful, I don't think community software has taken search as seriously as they should. I will give Kudos to IPB for having "Content-specific" searching (ie. gallery, blog, forum, article ...etc).

Tags help ... and search engines love tags ... but it only helps a bit.

 

[xIsabel38]

Hey guys, hoping one of you can help me out here. My developer is designing a PHP based Search engine and trying to integrate it with the forum and wiki but he needs to know "which Zend products xenForo uses" if that makes sense to anyone.

 

[Naatan]

Hey guys, hoping one of you can help me out here. My developer is designing a PHP based Search engine and trying to integrate it with the forum and wiki but he needs to know "which Zend products xenForo uses" if that makes sense to anyone.

He can see what Zend libraries XF uses just by browsing to the library/Zend folder. They don't use much of it though, I'd say it's 95% XenForo, 5% Zend.

 

[0xym0r0n]

Try regular google searches with the following format

media site:xenforo.com

or

whateverIwanttosearch site:xenforo.com

this is what i do lol

 

[xIsabel38]

We're trying to locate the database table ID that xenForo uses to write the information from users. Such as, when they make a post, a comment, etc... Does anyone know this or how I can find it?