Too many beer/place search results

Help Discussion in 'BeerAdvocate Talk' started by StonedTrippin, Jul 4, 2020.

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  1. StonedTrippin

    StonedTrippin Grand High Pooh-Bah (7,880) May 28, 2011 Colorado
    Pooh-Bah

    If I missed this in another thread I am sorry, but did we do something to change the way search results populate? I am seeing a ton of results for what seem like specific enough searches now. For example, a search of "modern times celestial city" just yielded 9,251 results. What?! I know those dudes make a lot of variants on some stuff, but not that many. Yeah the stuff I was after was near the top, but still, when did search results become this inclusive? Again, sorry if I missed this elsewhere, but this seems like an inefficient way to find beers, especially obscure ones without many ratings here yet with the potential to get lost in the shuffle. Is it just me?
     
    #1 StonedTrippin, Jul 4, 2020
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  2. shelby415

    shelby415 Pooh-Bah (2,098) Oct 10, 2011 Oregon
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    It's not just you. I looked up "Psuedo" and only three beers showed, none of which were Psuedo Sue or the variants. Then I looked up "All Day IPA" and the beer didn't show up until the third page of returns, following a number of retired beers that just had the word "all" in the title.
     
    #2 shelby415, Jul 4, 2020
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  3. Snowcrash000

    Snowcrash000 Grand High Pooh-Bah (6,041) Oct 4, 2017 Germany
    Mod Team Society Pooh-Bah Trader

    I've noticed this as well, it's pretty bad for place searches too.
     
    #3 Snowcrash000, Jul 4, 2020
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  4. officerbill

    officerbill Pooh-Bah (2,228) Feb 9, 2019 New York
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    Have you tried quoting multi-word searches?
    Sunny Ridge brought up over 1,700 results, mostly with Ridge in the name.
    “Sunny Ridge” brought up two.
    Post Shift came back with 1,902 results, “Post Shift” had one.
     
    #4 officerbill, Jul 4, 2020
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  5. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,518) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    STAFF Mod Team Society Pooh-Bah

    It's in reference to this: https://www.beeradvocate.com/commun...earching-for-this-beer-says-not-found.640565/

    Our archaic method of searching wasn't pulling up certain beers. I made some adjustments and did some testing over the last few weeks, but ultimately had to compromise and include more noise in our results. The alternative is less results, but a significantly higher chance of no results on many queries.

    Eventually we'll upgrade the search and this won't be an issue.
     
    #5 Todd, Jul 4, 2020
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  6. bret27

    bret27 Grand Pooh-Bah (3,064) Mar 10, 2009 California
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    One way I’ve worked around this recently is searching for the brewery, then to the +add beer section. Then a compact alphabetical list of all their beers comes up. You can just click on it if it’s there. Don’t need to add it.
     
    #6 bret27, Jul 4, 2020
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  7. bret27

    bret27 Grand Pooh-Bah (3,064) Mar 10, 2009 California
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    Just a quick follow-up.
    This appears to be fixed. Search engines seem to be working well.
     
    #7 bret27, Jul 7, 2020
  8. NickThePyro

    NickThePyro Pooh-Bah (1,731) Dec 24, 2012 Washington
    Pooh-Bah

    THIS NEW SEARCH IS SO INCREDIBLY TERRIBLE!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE MAKE IT AN OPTION TO GO BACK TO THE OLD SEARCH!!! I have had zero problems with the old search algorithm finding beer. I have checked into almost 5,000 beers this way without a complaint. Now it is a total PITA to find the beer I am looking for with COPIOUS AMOUNTS OF CLUTTER HIDING WHAT I AM TRULY LOOKING FOR! I can type the name of a beer out perfectly and it wont show up because it is hidden with all this useless clutter. Now I have to go to the brewery's list of beers and there it is plain as day. I rarely post on the forum, but this is such a terrible change that I had to voice my opinion. If you haven't noticed yet, THIS NEW SEARCH SUCKS!
     
    #8 NickThePyro, Jul 8, 2020
  9. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,518) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    STAFF Mod Team Society Pooh-Bah

    Read: https://www.beeradvocate.com/commun...eer-place-search-results.642841/#post-6957171

    Hardly worth shouting about, but thanks for the feedback.
     
    #9 Todd, Jul 8, 2020
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  10. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,518) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    STAFF Mod Team Society Pooh-Bah

    Update: removed the wildcard on words (e.g. - "Bud" would return "Budweiser") and switched to full text "in natural language mode." It's still far from perfect, but it's significantly reduced the noise in the results.
     
    #10 Todd, Jul 10, 2020
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  11. Beerbom

    Beerbom Pooh-Bah (1,750) Dec 20, 2014 California
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    Has anyone else noticed it's become increasingly difficult to find beers on here when using the search function? I've never had this much trouble. There's countless examples I've encountered lately but today's example is searching for "The Apricot" by De Garde. And yes I know De Garde is treated as two words but I never have and don't even type in the Brewery name when I know the exact beer name. When you type In "The Apricot" It doesn't show up at all even though it's exactly what the name of the beer is. As I said there's countless other examples I've encountered but only recently. I never had a problem finding beers on Beeradvocate like I have in the past six months or so. Have they changed their search feature/parameters? Has anyone else noticed this? I used to always brag about the search feature on here (well really I was complaining about my work software not being as good) and how it works well with even partial names/words and was so much better than the search feature on my work software which I pay thousands of dollars every year to use
     
    #11 Beerbom, Aug 9, 2020
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  12. Bitterbill

    Bitterbill Grand High Pooh-Bah (7,036) Sep 14, 2002 Wyoming
    BA4LYFE Society Pooh-Bah

    I did a search for Bell's Octoberfest typing in Bell's October and it didn't direct me to the fest. Strange.
     
    #12 Bitterbill, Aug 9, 2020
  13. DCH

    DCH Savant (1,119) Jun 12, 2013 New York

    I’ve been having trouble with the search function too. I’ve been using google to get to the BA page for certain beers.
     
    #13 DCH, Aug 9, 2020
  14. MNAle

    MNAle Initiate (0) Sep 6, 2011 Minnesota

    My workaround is if it doesn't pull up the beer I'm searching for, I search for the brewery and then select the beer. That usually works.
     
    #14 MNAle, Aug 9, 2020
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  15. Cubatobaco

    Cubatobaco Pooh-Bah (2,057) Jan 27, 2013 Virginia
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    This is the only way I've found to make it easier for searching out a specific beer. They'll eventually get it right. The only thing I wished that worked better is using the search on the forum page for a beer other than having to go the "beer" page.
     
    #15 Cubatobaco, Aug 9, 2020
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  16. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,518) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    STAFF Mod Team Society Pooh-Bah

    I merged your thread into this post. There are a few recent threads on this topic. Basically, we need a better search solution across the site. I know. Trust me.

    Until then, I've been experimenting with different search types in order to find a balance. The current one works, but there's too much noise and it's clear that users want more accuracy. So...I've just updated the search to be more strict. This will result more accurate results, but it requires some accuracy from the user. It's less forgiving and the results may reflect this.

    Also, some common words (like "the") are ignored. With your example, try search for "de Garde The Apricot" ("de" is too short and "the" is too common, so both will be ignored).

    Give it a try now.
     
    #16 Todd, Aug 9, 2020
    Last edited by a moderator: Aug 9, 2020
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  17. MNAle

    MNAle Initiate (0) Sep 6, 2011 Minnesota

    I also wish this was a choice in the search parameter dropdown while in the forums (which is where I usually am).
     
    #17 MNAle, Aug 9, 2020
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  18. DCH

    DCH Savant (1,119) Jun 12, 2013 New York

    I’ve done that too, then some various sorting lol
     
    #18 DCH, Aug 9, 2020
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  19. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,518) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    STAFF Mod Team Society Pooh-Bah

    Closing this one down as the original issue has been addressed with the last update.
     
    #19 Todd, Aug 10, 2020
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