1269197 - Search shows totally irrelevant content, it's practically useless

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(developer.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Search, defect)

Description

[V@no]

What did you do?
================
Search anything
i.e. keyword "tree"
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/search?q=tree

What happened?
==============
Result shows anything that mentioned keyword "tree" relevance is totally lost.

What should have happened?
==========================
Correct result, for instance it should show on top result with the full word mentioned in the title, not partial word, then shows anything mentioned that word in description, then show result with partial word.

Is there anything else we should know?
======================================
First of all, the search "settings" are not remembered between search sessions, and changing them every time is pain in the ass, simply because after each change we have to wait for the search refresh the result, rather then change them all, then hit "apply" button (or have 1-2 seconds delay between auto apply/refresh kicks in).

Secondly, I don't know what is the formula behind the search engine, but not being able search for full word or use 2+ keywords that treated with AND instead of OR, makes the search experience totally waste of time. You might as well just go to google and search there.

Comment 1

[John Whitlock [:jwhitlock]]

It sounds like the recent site search changes have negatively impacted your workflow. I'm sorry about that. 

We tuned site search to serve the majority of users who use site search, to emphasize the most common technologies searched for, and for the case of a first-time visitor who gets their reference need and leaves the site.

Site search returns these results:

* https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/TreeWalker
* https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/TreeWalker/filter
* https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/TreeWalker/root

Web search engines appear to have results closer to what you want:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site:developer.mozilla.org+tree

The top results are:

* https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XUL/tree
* https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Add-ons/Code_snippets/Tree
* https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Tech/XUL/Tutorial/Styling_a_Tree

Was one of these the result you were looking for? If so, you may want to integrate web search engines into your work flow, as site search changes probably won't be a priority for several months.

Some relevant bugs from site search (http://mzl.la/1QKHy5a) you may want to vote up:

* bug 1265737
* bug 1262543
* bug 1262541

Comment 2

[BMO Automation]

MDN Web Docs' bug reporting has now moved to GitHub. From now on, please file content bugs at https://github.com/mdn/sprints/issues/ and platform bugs at https://github.com/mdn/kuma/issues/.