Search is Kinda Bad

Hah. Actually, "WWII" has two character mismatches with "WW2", and for short words like this the system only allows one. This is a good example of something that's completely obvious to humans, but where computer says no.

david wrote:
Hah. Actually, "WWII" has two character mismatches with "WW2", and for short words like this the system only allows one. This is a good example of something that's completely obvious to humans, but where computer says no.

Google nailed it ...

Thomas has added WWII Treasure Hunters as an AKA, so it will now show up in a search.

TonyMayhew wrote:
Thomas has added WWII Treasure Hunters as an AKA, so it will now show up in a search.

Adding all possible name variations as AKA is not a real solution, isn't it? :)

SilverSurfer wrote:
Google nailed it ...

Let's also compare how many people are working as developers at google (17850) vs TVmaze...

Jan wrote:
Let's also compare how many people are working as developers at google (17850) vs TVmaze...

16850?

But seriously, I know TVmaze can not compete with Google and that search will not be as good or thorough as a search engine. That said, I think search is too weak and needs to be improved. I'm not expecting 100% or even 90% ... but is 75% too much to shoot for? I come across searches that are weakish all the time but when the above occurred, I'm spurred to bring it up.

I didn't even think of adding an aka so thank you Thomas, appreciate it. But tnt is very correct ... try a search for WW II Treasure Hunters or WW 2 Treasure Hunters. Both searches give no results. A single space stumps search? Try just Treasure Hunters and you get 6 hits, including Look and Read which I assume is included because one of the aka's has Treasure in it? There has to be a nice middle ground that says "No exact match but here's some possible matches"

Try this query in google.com:

site:tvmaze.com WW II Treasure Hunter

Most sites have good enough search, but corner cases exist for a number of reasons. Even google could order result in strange way. For a bad search for TV shows try futon critic. Not only order of words had to be exact, spaces should be exact, and article 'The' should be in the end of title.

Helpful Tip :: If you are having some problems finding what you're looking for, try using Google restricting the search to just tvmaze.com.

This link -> https://www.google.ca/search?hl=en-CA&as_sitesearch=tvmaze.com will bring up a search of the entire site. Just go into the search box on Google and after the site:tvmaze.com enter a space the whatever it is you are looking for ... this should help with the more problematic searches. For example, add a space then ww ii treasure and the first hit is WW2 Treasure Hunters ... boom, search complete.

This can be especially helpful if you are looking for something other than a show or people.

BTW, the link above is a prefilled advanced search ... for Google Canada ... here is a link to the the start of an advanced search ->https://www.google.ca/advanced_search?hl=en-CA&fg=1 ... I assume they will work for everybody though Google may switch you over to your local Google. For best results/usage you should try to find the links for your own local Google.

ymmv

By the way, I'm happy for the report. I'm tracking all reports since the last update to the search system in a ticket. But I just need to temper your expectations - search is a very tricky topic and it's really easy to break one thing while you're improving another.

david wrote:
By the way, I'm happy for the report. I'm tracking all reports since the last update to the search system in a ticket. But I just need to temper your expectations - search is a very tricky topic and it's really easy to break one thing while you're improving another.

No problem. Do you want all wonky searches or just the most annoying ... I guess as judged by the searcher. And I understand search will never be perfect but incremental change is much better than no change. Understand the fix one break one thing ... and if you just break one with each fix you're ahead of Micro$oft which is kinda fix one, make 2 worse, break 5 and holy crap pull the update! pull the update!!

Hate to bump an old topic, but is there any way to put the exact results first? At least for single-word queries.

For example, I'm looking for series called "Space" https://www.tvmaze.com/search?q=space and it's kinda confusing to find it at the bottom of page 2 of the results, not at the top of the list.