'Intelligent' quick search?

[Morkin]

I tend to use the quick search a lot for finding games (I assume that's what most people use the site for but could be wrong).

I appreciate that there have been a lot of fan tributes, themed games, mods etc. in recent years, but I've sometimes found that the alphabetical result order can mean the more 'appropriate' results get a bit buried.

For example, if I search for 'jetpac', I get 9 results, but I have to scroll down to number #6 for the 'real' Jetpac.

I don't know if there's such a thing as an 'intelligent' search, but if it were like a Google search I'd guess Ultimate's Jetpac would appear as #1... I mean, it's one of the most famous Speccy games of all time..

Am guessing nothing can really be done but I thought I'd mention it anyway. Don't know if anyone else has any opinions/thoughts.

[PeterJ]

Hi [mention]Morkin[/mention],

I understand the issue, but not much we can do unfortunately. The results are sorted by a range of database fields. If anyone can suggest a different sort order I'm happy to take a look. We don't have the ability to do what would be a Google style result.

My only thought would be (and this is very much top of my head stuff and not thought through or discussed with [mention]Einar Saukas[/mention]), would be to add some sort of weighing field to every title in the database. But then what's important to you, may not be to others.

Peter

[Morkin]

No worries Peter.

The search is on the whole fine, and unless the change was (a) simple to implement and (b) would benefit everyone, it's probably not worth spending tinkering effort on it. But I thought I'd ask as I don't always know how these things work technically

[Ralf]

Google is "intelligent" because it has some really advanced algorythms which you don't see but
which are used every time when you search for something. They take into account history of previous searches, links
clicked by people, quality of linked text (estimated by another agorythm) and so on.

It was created by hundreds of people working for years at least 8 hours a day.

It's really too much to compare some fan site to Google or Facebook and expect it to work in similar way.

But as Peter says if we use some "weight", give weight 1 to all tiles and the manually change the weight of some
chosen titles - "this" Manic Miner, "this" Jet Set Willy etc. then it should work and be easy enough to implemente

[Kweepa]

A couple of thoughts:
- sort by release date? so original titles would come first.
- sort by number of magazine reviews? kind of like google's weight by references.

[Nienn Heskil]

'Popularity' / old good click counter. And then it will sort itself out, eventually.

Needs to be optional, however. Like an option in a 'sort by' list.

[8BitAG]

If they were arranged by shortest title then Jet Pac would at least come higher up. When a search term is an exact match for an entry it is annoying/odd that you have to scroll down to find it.

Are there other examples where this is an issue, though? Might be worth collating them to see if there are ways to improve things?

How does the search work at the moment? Does it do a match on the game name first, then look at other fields? Are the results listed in strictly alphabetical order on any matches, or do the matches on the game name appear at the top?

[8BitAG]

If I do a search for the game SABRE it seems mad that the first result is PEARL HARBOUR, because it happens to be published by Sabresoft, which comes above SABRE and SABRE WULF.

But that can be avoided by not using the QUICK SEARCH and instead using the form on the main page and searching for SABRE under title.

That doesn't help with the JETPAC example, though, which even with "strict search" enabled, shows the other games above the exact match.

Is "exact match" an option that could be added to the main page search form? Can that be implemented?

[PeterJ]

The quick search is exactly that. For more detailed search you need to use the advanced search

We have made so many changes to search over the years, and as someone said yesterday, it's never going to be Google.

I will however publish the results order SQL for discussion and we can look at changing that. Hope that helps.

Exact match is a possibility, but then you have the issue of alternative names, accents and do you include and, the and other short words.

I'm not dismissing any of these excellent suggestions, just saying there are broader challenges that might initially be imagined.

[8BitAG]

Some terms are a nightmare to cope with... especially if you don't know what the user might be after...

For example... imagine you decided to try and find the game Elite using the quick search bar.

It's on page 3 of the results

Weirdly 3DC is result #2 !? (Presumably because Hit-Pak is linked to the publisher Elite)
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/3 ... ectrum/3DC

I don't think anyone would be looking for that game when searching for "Elite"!

[PeterJ]

Quick search is a very broad search. Would always suggest advanced search for most purposes.

[PeterJ]

If I do a search for the game SABRE it seems mad that the first result is PEARL HARBOUR, because it happens to be published by Sabresoft, which comes above SABRE and SABRE WULF.

But that can be avoided by not using the QUICK SEARCH and instead using the form on the main page and searching for SABRE under title.

That doesn't help with the JETPAC example, though, which even with "strict search" enabled, shows the other games above the exact match.

Is "exact match" an option that could be added to the main page search form? Can that be implemented?

As you say Sabre comes first if you put that in the title, which is the behaviour I would expect. Jetpac comes a few down because of the alphabetical sorting.

As someone said yesterday, sorting by release year, then title might be better.

[PeterJ]

[mention]8BitAG[/mention], [mention]Kweepa[/mention] and [mention]Morkin[/mention],

I have changed the sort order on most of the searches to sort by release year, then library title. If you search for Jetpac in the title field, the original game comes higher up the results.

[Morkin]

Cheers Peter.

At first glance I think that looks loads better. Hopefully it hasn't adversely affected anyone...

[Stu]

Would something like this be possible?

• Exact title match first

• Then title matches

• Remaining results (in whatever order works best)

[PeterJ]

Would something like this be possible?

• Exact title match first

• Then title matches

• Remaining results (in whatever order works best)

Not without making significant changes to the codebase I'm afraid.

[PeterJ]

Cheers Peter.

At first glance I think that looks loads better. Hopefully it hasn't adversely affected anyone...

Excellent. I've backed up the original file in case of issues.

I'm just back from a 350 mile round trip to pickup an eBay purchase so I'm going for a snooze now!

[Juan F. Ramirez]

I think it's already been discussed here, but a good solution would be displaying suggestions in the search field as in google; old WoS did it and worked well.

[PeterJ]

I think it's already been discussed here, but a good solution would be displaying suggestions in the search field as in google; old WoS did it and worked well.

Yes,[mention]RMartins[/mention] was working on that,and I believe we showed a demo some time back. Will search and see if I can find it.

[Einar Saukas]

I have changed the sort order on most of the searches to sort by release year, then library title. If you search for Jetpac in the title field, the original game comes higher up the results.

To be honest I think this change was terrible

Search results now look like a mess, for instance:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/list?group_id=1011

I think it's much harder to find anything now

[Einar Saukas]

Some terms are a nightmare to cope with... especially if you don't know what the user might be after...

For example... imagine you decided to try and find the game Elite using the quick search bar.

It's on page 3 of the results

Weirdly 3DC is result #2 !? (Presumably because Hit-Pak is linked to the publisher Elite)
https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/entry/3 ... ectrum/3DC

I don't think anyone would be looking for that game when searching for "Elite"!

Good point. But that's easy to fix. Quick searching for "Elite" should give a list of games that have word "Elite" in the title, and a list of companies that have word "Elite" in the name (so you can click on it if you want further details). But it should NOT give a list of games published by a company that has word "Elite" in the name.

I took the liberty of making this change already, I hope [mention]PeterJ[/mention] won't mind...

[8BitAG]

To be honest I think this change was terrible

Search results now look like a mess, for instance:

https://spectrumcomputing.co.uk/list?group_id=1011

That would actually be quite a nice search, if the unknown years were at the bottom as you could technically see the development of games with that sort of feature.

However... I am not a fan of sorting the results by year. That is just a bodge... it is not a suitable alternative to providing the closest result to the search term as the first result. The original alphabetical order would at least help you get there quicker eventually.

[8BitAG]

Good point. But that's easy to fix. Quick searching for "Elite" should give a list of games that have word "Elite" in the title, and a list of companies that have word "Elite" in the name (so you can click on it if you want further details). But it should NOT a list of games published by a company that has word "Elite" in the name.

I took the liberty of making this change already, I hope @PeterJ won't mind...

Yeah, that's much better.

[PeterJ]

However... I am not a fan of sorting the results by year. That is just a bodge... it is not a suitable alternative to providing the closest result to the search term as the first result. The original alphabetical order would at least help you get there quicker eventually.

I take a certain amount of offence at the word 'bodge' It was suggested as a solution earlier in the thread and I implemented it to try it out. [mention]Morkin[/mention] was happy with it. This is the thing with search. You will never please everyone, so some people will be unhappy.

'Give me the closest' result is not SQL You grab a set of results based on the input, then order the results by any of the fields returned either ascending or descending. This is why I suggested a 'weighting' score.

You may want to read this:

https://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_orderby.asp

[Morkin]

...It was just a small observation after running the quick search on what might be called 'classic' games, if the change to the default order is detrimental to other searches then feel free to revert. As people have said there's a perfectly functioning advanced search facility

Am not up on the technical side of these things (will leave that to you guys ). One thing that might be interesting is whether you can see what visitors to the site are typing in that quick search box, don't know if that's possible?