Topic on Help talk:CirrusSearch

For example: I put parimion into Wikipedia's search box. It says: "Showing results for pavilion. (LINK:) Search instead for parimion." I click that link and it says: "There were no results matching the query."

The spelling correction is (sometimes) useful, but in my experience, the "search instead" link never ever gives any results. Indeed that link only seems to be offered when your typed text is not present in the entire wiki, and then it does the best-guess spelling for you.

Am I right? If so, what's the point of that "search instead" link, which is guaranteed to produce no results?

We do only replace your query with the suggestion if the original query got zero results. I think the "search instead" language pre-dates all of us who are currently working on the search platform team, so I can't give you the original justification for it—though mimicking Google's UI patterns generally makes search more understandable for most users. However, I can imagine that some people—particularly power users and editors of various sorts—would be upset if they searched for parimion, got results for pavilion, and then couldn't verify that parimion did in fact get zero results.

Google will override your intended search with their suggestion and give a link for your original search that gives fewer results. So, we are working in an environment where people might expect valid results to be overridden by a search engine; letting them see their original results even though there will be zero is goofy, but it's goofiness in the name of transparency.

Seems rather simple to improve. Make it clear to the user that the query they chose will result in 0 entries, e.g.: "Showing results for pavilion. Search instead for parimion (Note: there are 0 results)".

>Am I right? If so, what's the point of that "search instead" link, which is guaranteed to produce no results?

No.

It is very important to keep the option allowing the user to search instead for whatever they typed. First, it allows them to verify the search engine's claim, it also makes it clear that the user isn't getting wild results because of some bug, and lastly, they can always check that it is accurate. After all, machines can and do make mistakes, and more importantly, the search engine can be wrong more often than not, especially, in a wiki where things can change. At the time of the query the search engine might be right, but just a few seconds later someone can create the page, or the new entry might simply be taking time to update the index despite the fact that the content was created right before your search.

Anyway, if a particular wiki doesn't like the message, I guess they could edit it using Mediawiki:search-rewritten.

If there are no results then I think it would be better to say "no results for X; here are results for Y", and drop the pointless link. I take "197"'s point that there might be results if you search again a few seconds later, but if you want to do that you can just hit Refresh or F5 etc. Hardly a common use case.

What is my next step? I have had bad experiences with bug trackers. How can I suggest this change without being shit on? Thanks.

I'm sorry that you've had bad experiences with task trackers. It's a recurring problem for a lot of people, unfortunately. In this case, the people who would be working on it agree with you, so there shoudn't be any reason for unpleasant discussion.

I've uncovered some of the history of the message—turns out one person on our team was here when it was implemented—and the original thought was that we might allow suggestions to overwrite queries that got a non-zero number of results, but that never materialized.

The current plan is to create a new message that says there are no results for the original query, which we'll show when appropriate, and keep the existing message for a possible future case where we overwrite a query with non-zero results.

I've created a task: T236296

Okay. Thanks. I really appreciate your help here as an "insider". Let's see how it goes :)

Glad I could help. Please do keep in mind that we have to prioritize and work through lots of tasks, so while this is probably straightforward, it may take a while for us to get to it. But you definitely gave us a helpful push in the right direction. Thanks!