this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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Why is the search functionality on sites like Reddit, really low quality? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago by pexavc@lemmy.world to c/experienced_devs@programming.dev
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I wanted to ask a technical questions, maybe high level, on why sites may have bad search and what the bottlenecks might be in almost never updating such in years. Was there something in the original development of the stack that is affecting progressive updates around the feature, how should one approach "Search" then in this case? Or is it simply a management issue.

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[โ€“] Lmaydev@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Google is way more advanced. It's doesn't just do a keyword search.

It does things like looking for similar words automatically., Looking at what other users clicked on after doing similar searches.

It can actually be frustrating when it includes things that are nothing to do with what you typed if your search is too specific.

[โ€“] pexavc@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

True, it would seem though, Google tackles a more complex problem, while Reddit or the like deals with its own specific data that has a predefined format that they know of.

Looking at what other users clicked on after doing similar searches. Yeah, I feel Reddit just doesn't account for these things, because requires way more work maybe to add as weights, if I am thinking of it correctly