Hey all! We'd like to hear your feedback regarding the SEARCH function on FlyerTalk
 

Hi,

My name is Mike, I work for Internet Brands, the company that operates the FlyerTalk community. Fairly recently, we've upgraded this site to a "beta" version of our own "Internet Brands" search engine; this was done in order to significantly improve the speed of this website and improve the search engine's capabilities, ie. you can now search for 3 letter airport codes and etc.

By now, a lot of you had the opportunity to use the new search feature, perhaps you did not even notice anything out of the ordinary - or perhaps you've encountered a problem or a bug; accordingly we really want to know about your experience.

I am here to listen to any and all feedback regarding the search function on FlyerTalk; please take a minute to leave a comment, be it positive or negative. I am working directly with the developer and your opinions will directly influence the changes made to the program!

If you are reporting a specific problem, please try to be as detailed as possible.

I appreciate your help in advance & don't hesitate to PM me or email me if need be.

Thanks,

Mike Anders
InternetBrands.com

Do not like.

I can't figure out how to search for a particular post w/in a thraed. When I go to the link above that says "search this thread" it brings up the thread that I am searching in vs. the post.

I can't be missing something completely obvious. That being said, I'm still not a huge fan, I don't find it particularly useful or beneficial unless it saves memory.

That one is annoying. The default on results for that function should be set to view by post. At present, to get it to do so you have to click 'search this thread ' then 'advanced search' and ask for the results by post there.

I also find the when you change the results by relevance to by posting date, it's hit or miss if the list changes at all, and more importantly, the list in anything but complete

I welcome IB's participation in asking for feedback, I just wish it had happened sooner.

I agree that having to click the show posts vs show threads, when I'm searching IN a thread is just stupid - that should be a defaulted value as thread is obviously not relevant.

Also annoying is that the search doesn't seem to be "complete". I don't have confidence that what is returned by the search actually reflects the available information. The few times I use it (as the issues have really made me disinclined to go anywhere near the function) the lists seems to change if I search more than once. I am fully aware that it can be returning consistent results at this point, but my perception is that its not and that is the premise I have work with. Really, that's the bottom line - something was implemented that didn't work well and was left for far too long - I know many people now rely on google or other engines outside of FT to find information within FT for the same reason.

The moderators get the brunt of it, but I also believe there are more dupes being posted b/c people just don't use search like they used to - either b/c they can't figure out how to change the post/threads option or have just been abused by it.

I'm glad you asked.

EVERY time I've searched for a thread I know exists and use the advanced search and search on titles only with words I KNOW are in the title, the thread I want doesn't come up. Frankly, I find this beta search useless.

Can you please give me a random example of the keywords you might be searching for - I want to see if you are using conditional statements or just plugging in words you want. Our biggest error so far has been the fact that we think we've improved the search - but did not explain or give an example of how to use the improved search functions to the users. The core technology of the new search is extremely powerful and intelligent - I think that once we add a couple of simple examples regarding the construction of your search query we'll all notice that finding just the right thing is going to become easier.

We're not talking rocket science here - we should all be able to search without having to read a FAQ or get instruction. If more is needed, then it is an issue with the product not the users - sorry but in the world of technology today - search should be a seamless process.

:confused: There is a big thread in the technical issues forum where many FTers have pointed out problems with search (plus there is at least one thread in talkteam). Wouldn't that be a good place to start?

The new search is not terribly robust. It only returns the threads I'm looking for about 60% of the time, returns the same thread multiple times in the same search, and exposes the moderator options to everyone (even though we can't use them). I prefer the old search most of the time.

At least the search function found the threads...here they are:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...ghlight=search

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=676224

As for my feedback...

I liked the format of the old one better - this new Search function is pretty bad. Actually, it is, IMHO, really bad.

The previous one had the sentence (and post) that the word was used in - which was great in filtering it out. The previous one didn't repeat the same thread.

This new search function just isn't as effective of a function is less userfriendly.

So after reviewing the original thread about the search - and looking at the direction this thread is heading it is obvious that the general consensus remains the same. I've outlined some prevalent issues that you've brought up - and we will address them accordingly. I thank you for the input.

THANK YOU !!^

and just in case, here is another negative vote on the new search:)

I agree. About the only way I can find a thread where I've posted, and know a word in the title is to limit it to searching my posts.

When the search DOES find something vaguely resembling what I am looking for it then sends me a list that contains many posts in one thread that you have to look for to see what they are and whether they are helpful. When doing a general search I think it would be less confusing to just refer to a thread that has the information you are looking for, although it sounds like some people prefer getting to a particular post.(?) Most often the results of the search is not germane to the inquiry or returns no hits at all.

I agree with other comments that this should be a seamless process and you shouldn't have to do an advanced search for something that is not real specific in nature.

I agree with the previous posters on the search function, and will add my 2 cents worth... I find it frustrating that the search function requires words of more than 4 letters! If I enter "buy ticket", for instance, the function does not recognize "buy", and the search goes off in a completely different direction than I wanted. I don't have time to become a thesaurus for a simple search, so I try not to use search unless I have the time and absolutely have to do the search.

I just thought i didn't know how to search properly cause i was new...

I did figure out last night how to display the results by post (instead of the whole thread), but IMHO it's too hidden/complicated.

I also tried to search for a thread that i knew existed ('Citi Platinum Amex has been upgraded', or some wording to that effect). I typed in 'Citi platinum amex' and the thread i was looking for didn't even make it to the first page of results.

Thanks for taking feedback - i hope the search function can be improved soon.

Isn't the IB team working together with the Webflyer IT staff?

I thought Mikel at Webflyer had compiled a task list from the legend search problems thread and sent to IB a while ago already? I would also suggest you to check out the Technical Issue Forum and see what had been reported that may be related to beta search. One thread came to my mind that may have been intertwined with the new search bugs.

One very frustrating thing for those of us who pay attention to the system glitches and take time reporting them to the board is the lack of communication or timely responses from the IB. Of course it is nice to have you starting "collecting" feedback now. I guess better late than never. (Please don't take it personally.) If I may, even without you asking, we've been giving feedback for MONTHS. There is sort of a self-help group among those tech-savvy FTers in the above referenced threads. You should be able to see some work-around solutions imbedded in them.

It would be even nicer if IB could give us a headsup on the timetable of the "permanent solutions", preferrably sometimes soon. @:-)

Thank you for asking.

thanks for asking, even if belatedly.

it's unrelated, but perhaps you can explain why you guys didn't seem truly interested in feedback until now? i don't want to sound hostile, i'm genuinely curious as to what changed.

to the topic at hand: i mentioned this on the other thread, but will state it again here: one change that's really unpleasant is the unavailability of a search that can be saved. if i'm doing a search on a place i might like to visit, it's helpful to save the results so i can get the same information in the future without having to come up with the proper search string. if i try to save the search now, it defaults to the search page, but there's no information. there's a complicated work-around a helpful flyertalker suggested in the other thread, but it would be nice to have a functionality that involves being able to save search results.

my vote is with others who have posted, the new search seems inferior to the old one. GoingAway is correct, while it's entirely possible this new search is getting complete results, i don't trust it. :(
(with cause, i suppose, 'cause often i can't find a thread i know exists....somewhere.)

One of the top reasons for scrapping the old search and designing the new search is so that flyertalk members can search for 3 letter words - ie. "buy" and airport codes. So, please - do try your search again, I don't think your 4 letter complaint above is a valid one. (And as per the post beneath - no intention of sounding harsh, just pointing out that the 4 letter search was indeed a problem but has been addressed as one of the top priorities).

Agree w/ the others that feedback has been given for quite a while & it's unfortunate that it's taken this long. But as has also been mentioned, better late than never.

BTW - just as a matter of politeness, you might have ended your last sentence with 'any longer'. Saying that a complaint is not valid (when until recently it was) is a bit harsh. Just a thought.

Cheers.

I'd like to be able to search for all terms. I was for example searching for Johathan Miles to see if anybody posted the link to his free book.

Of course the search brought up a million posts, as miles is probably the most used term here.

There are other times it would be good to find only posts which include all the search terms.

Might I also suggest you take time to get feedback from the moderators in Phoenix this weekend?

When I go to the search, and type in "Jonathan Miles" with quotes to indicate that this is an exact phrase I am looking for - there are no results. The operators such as AND, OR, NOT are implemented in this search engine and you can always use ( + - ) signs to target the search further, for example

"Jonathan Miles" -delta -united +free +book

Same problem for me, only it also fails when I just do the general search with the specific phrase.

P.S., FTers could search for 3 letter words in the old search, all you had to do was add an * after them, which rarely created problems for me. E.g., to search for LAX, type in LAX*.

This is a reported problem in the ongoing Search Problems Thread in Technical Issue Forum.

The conclusion seems to be beta search fails to search the "key words" in the thread title and only search in the posts themselves. That is causing a major headache for our mods.

It appears that the upcoming Arizona moderator meeting will focus on all of these issues. As per "AZ Travels the World"; he will deliver an exact detailed list for the critical changes that are needed. We will amend some things according to that list in order to change the administration experience and the general user experience. And while I realize that there are other ongoing fix requests the moderator compiled list will be an important document indicating not only the current status of flyertalk forums but the steps that we need to take towards improving the community.

Just as a point of clarification, at the upcoming Moderator Workshop, we will be setting aside time to discuss the current problems with FT search functionality. Our objective will be come up with a list of problems and priorities, from the perspective of the moderator group.

While we moderators obviously have search experiences as users, we have a unique set of problems using the search function in our moderator roles. It's the latter that we'll be primarily focusing on in this discussion, in order to provide InternetBrands with a list of the top search-related problems we now face as mods.

We will also no doubt capture general search problems, and will also report those to IB. But folks, please don't rely exclusively upon this process to identify all the user problems with the search tool. Please continue reporting your problems and concerns directly via PM, or by posting in this thread, or one of the search-focused threads in the Technical Issues forum.

Thanks!

-AZ

Yes. Being a big forums guy myself I side with the issues and I am hoping that the moderators of this forum are a fairly good representation of a sizable portion of the majority on FlyerTalk and the list will therefore present concrete examples of things that we need to fix. On a slight sidenote, InternetBrands had a meeting today where "the flyertalk list" has been discussed and I am looking forward to it as we want to make sure everyone is happy with their flyertalk experience. Contact me directly in the meantime via PM or email if you have any other concerns; and don't hesitate to post in this thread as I checking this often.

Thanks again,

Mike / InternetBrands.com

I do not like the new search function at all. Especially the one "Find more posts of this user". The way it sorts those posts is horrible and not reliable. Also, if you do that for your own posts, it doesn't show me any more if there are replies to it which mean that I would like to go back to that thread. I don't have the time to go to each and every thread every time I log in. So this was really an easy way to check if anybody responded to me.
Please make sure that this will be fixed somehow.

thank you

Although mentioned in the other thread, I'll repeat it here: The relevance ranking of search results is useless, posting date is much more helpful. I believe the old search didn't include quotes within a post in the little blurb it shows as results. The new blurbs blend quotes and new text together so that you can't tell where one ends and another begins:

[QUOTE=cblaisd;8839727] Dispatch had told the captain that due to W&B issues he would have to remove one passenger. This is always a popular thing to do on flights to Hawai`i. After several more minutes of conversation, the captain came on the PA, apologized for the delay, and off we went. What I could pick up from overhearing (and which was later confirmed by the FA when I spoke with her) was that the Captain overrode Dispatch, but it had to get kicked upstairs somewhere. It's actually Centralized Load Planning (CLP) not Dispatch that does weight and balance calculations and supplies the flight with the weight manifest. They actually sit pretty close to Dispatch at WHQ, but the functions are very different. Regardless, there is no way for the captain to override CLP. CLP can only issue the final weight manifest if the flight is legal to depart, and UA flights cannot depart without a final weight manifest. It's much more likely that they were slightly overweight, and they determined a different way to reduce the weight by around 200 pounds, as opposed to removing a passenger. Without knowing what was causing the weight limit, it's impossible to know what they could do, but it can include burning more fuel on taxi/en route, counting children on board, or removing some cargo.

Yesterday I searched Coupon Connection to see if anyone was looking for a free car rental code. I searched for "rental" on thread title. I expected the search result to be in order of date, most recent on the top. But it wasn't; the dates were all mixed up. Totally useless for a search like this. I did discover that I could sort by last post date; this should be the default, not an option.

This thread asking for search function feedback has slid to the third page of CommunityBuzz! due to a recent lack of posts.

We're going to transfer the thread to the Technical Issues forum where it is perhaps more apropos and where it will gain more visibility.

Thanks.


___________________

Cholula
CommunityBuzz! Co-Moderator

Hi,

Still here; just awaiting some ideas and suggestions from the AZ mod meet.

Thanks

What we learned from Mikel at Webflyer and JohnMcG, the division leader at InternetBrands, was that the process of identifying and prioritizing the major issues related to the search functionality on FlyerTalk has already occurred and improvements are underway. So we chose not to confuse the matter by duplicating the effort.

JohnMcG assured us that he understands the importance of the issue and he took away the action items of following up on the process, driving it from his leadership position, and setting up a stronger communications process between IB and the FT community.

My suggestion at this point, andersIB, is to be in touch with John.

I may be late to the game, but my list:

1) Default thread search to return results by Post, not Thread. Obviously, since we are already within the thread, it's useless to return the thread URL as the sole result. Going to advanced search is just way too many mouse clicks. I want instant gratification, not this almost instant but still slightly delayed gratification. ;)

2) Sort results by Date. I, too, see little relevance to "thread relevance." Perhaps this is because it's not clear how the posts are ranked. Why does one post that contains the word "bulkead" once rated 74% while another containing the same word the same number of times rated 45%? Default the search results by date, and possibly allow a sort by username as well. This may be helpful if we're looking for a post by, say, mahasamatman.

3) The "search this forum" dropdown has radio buttons that allow you to select whether the results are returned by thread or by post. How about allowing this for the main board search dropdown as well?

4) I like the fact that you can preview a thread by floating your cursor over the result when searching threads (actually, I wish this were a feature in general not limited to searches, but that's a different topic). Why not do the same with Post results? At the very least, clean up the post results. Right now, it looks like a random middle snippet of the post is shown, oftentimes not giving me a good idea of what the result is about. I need a longer snippet, or the ability to preview the entire post.

My 4 cents.

The "beta" version of our own "Internet Brands" search engine is VERY POOR.

Please get rid of this current search function and return the former model. I have stopped using Search, and reduced my visits to FT because of the lack of a functional search tool.

This is a new problem for me. I was trying to search for all threads in the Starwood forum with "Clayton" in the title. Search pulled up all threads on FT. Then I tried for all threads with Clayton in them, again limited to Starwood. Again, search pulled up all FT threads. I could have learned a lot about Michael Clayton and not very much about the Sheraton Clayton.

Not only am I seeing the problem SanDiego1K is having with the search returning threads outside of the forum being searched, but the post dates in the search results are displaying June, 2008 dates. As far as I am concerned, the integrity of the entire engine is suspect as it is not able to return accurate results from a simple query.

Ditto for both "Search this forum" being broken AND some searches returning goofy dates -- either before the existence of the Internet (never mind the existence of FT), e.g., dates in 1969 or 1970, or after the current date, e.g., in June 2008.

Ever heard of "regression testing?" :rolleyes: OK, I guess we end users are stuck doing the regression testing.... :(