There are always changes to the search results. We modify those for improvements and adjustments more or less constantly.
Thanks Otto
I’m battling to understand though how plugins with 100 000’s of active users show up at the bottom whereas plugins with very few users and bad reviews show up at the top? In the past it was plugins with high ratings and high active users that showed up at the top.
The plugin search system uses lots of different things to rank results, but no, it’s not as simple as “high rating” or “high number of users” come first. If that were the case, the results would be truly useless. I know, I’ve tested that before.
What the search is showing is “relevance” based on what you searched for. If you’re getting bad results, try putting in better search queries. This is a document search engine, after all. You’re searching the names and descriptions of the plugins. If you just search for one word things like “backup” or “seo” then you’re going to have a bad time. But if you search for things like “backup media images to dropbox” then you might get more specific results.
Treat it like Google. If you don’t find what you want, refine your search terms.
Hi @otto42,
the new change in the search algorithm might cause that plugin developers will start the plugin name with the “keyword” what they are firing at. Look at the page “Slider” for example: https://wordpress.org/plugins/search.php?q=slider
The first 15 result is a “Slider …” and the most popular sliders are at the bottom of the second page. Following the conventions and rules seems like disadvantage in the search results.
I red your details in a Facebook group about naming conventions and it would be perfectly fine if everyone use a unique brand name. For example if you would create a new field into the readme.txt as “Brand” it might result that the plugin’s real names would be “Brand” + ” – ” + “Plugin name” (ex.: “Huge-IT – Slider” and not just “slider”), with this improvement the search engine would give better result as nobody could “reserve keywords”.
Hi Otto
I am fully aware of how the search works – I have been here for 7+ years 😉
What I am trying to say is that something has gone wrong with the search index. This is a new error and has happened in the last day or so. There has been a massive change in the way the search results are listed.
What I am trying to say is that something has gone wrong with the search index
I’m aware of what you’re trying to say.
What I am telling you is that nothing has gone wrong with the search index. I made some tweaks yesterday to see how the results look. Expect more tweaks, and eventually a very large scale change when we switch to the new plugin directory.
Geez, guys. You make one little change and everybody freaks out about it…
There is nothing wrong with the results. We do tweak things. Change is not bad. Okay? 🙂
If you really *must* know, I changed the relevance algorithm to use SPH04, dropped the tag-weight by half, and gave ratings a minor boost in the tie-breakers. But then, that’s not really very useful information to know, is it? Search algorithms are complex things. You can’t just look at it from the outside and say “oh it’s all broken now”, because minor tweaks cause very large changes. This is why we test.
@nextendweb: Shockingly enough, the only people who seem to search for single word things like “slider” are plugin authors who try to tweak their results for single word searches like “slider”.
Not too concerned about that. Real people search differently. They don’t typically use single-keyword searches.
Expect more tweaks, and eventually a very large scale change when we switch to the new plugin directory.
I’m really looking forward to this 😉
Oh, and I’m all for improving the user experience.
Otto,
I’m not againts the change, we are really happy when the search engine getting better as it helps the wp.org users to find the best plugins for their need. The current state of the search engine does not seem the best in my opinion as some of the developers started to renaming their plugins. Ex.: https://profiles.wordpress.org/juna-it/#content-plugins
I wish you to find the best search engine weights as it serves both users and developers! 🙂
@nextendweb: What I’m changing now is mainly a temporary measure. The new search engine will replace what we currently have with a whole lot more flexibility. So, don’t consider any of these changes to be long term. I’m just tweaking what we’ve got to buy time, basically.
Developers doing dumb things like renaming their plugins are going to have a really, really bad day in the future. I do not recommend it. 🙂
However, if you do see devs trying to game our search engine like this, inform the plugins team directly. We don’t allow that. And we’ll complain to them about it. And if they keep doing it, then we’ll remove their plugins and ban them from the repository. So, you know, that’s probably a good thing too.
I’m having the same problem when trying to find some plugins for a new site. I wanted to find a good caching plugin so tried searching so I could compare the most popular ones and decide but when I type in “cache” or “caching” or “speed” I get a bunch of random plugins. The first one on the list is “Cache Tweets widget” which isn’t even anything to do with caching :s
I’m having the same problem when trying to find a new security plugin too. The first hit is an unrated login captcha plugin and the second is a HTML5 video player?? @otto42 I appreciate the work you’re doing to improve things but how are we supposed to find plugins now? Should I be searching using specific plugin names only? The only way I can find WP Super Cache is if I type in that specific name.
Thanks!
@jollerbills The problem you’re having is that “cache” is a generic word, not a good search term. You can “cache” all sorts of things. That Cache Tweets widget using a cache when retriving tweets to avoid hitting twitter API limits. I admit that it’s not a good name, but it’s not wrong either.
As for finding WP-Super-Cache, it’s one of the Featured plugins. Not something you need to search for, really.
Like I said, the new plugin directory is going to have lots of changes. Tags will be becoming more like categories. Yes, we’re going to have a big list of categories for plugins to fit into. Ratings and reviews will probably have more impact on results. We’re switching to ElasticSearch for the backend engine. The directory will be running WordPress instead of an older bbPress install. Things like that.
Searching is indeed hard, but hey, you have to search for the right things too. There are well over 1000 plugins in the directory that have the word “cache” in them somewhere. No automated system is going to read your mind and know that you want a whole site caching solution. Categories will probably help, but search is always going to be limited by the input you give it.
@otto42 thanks for your reply! I understand that “cache” is a generic word. I tried “website caching” and the results weren’t any better. I’m not sure how to be any more specific than that and I’m not sure that many non-technical WordPress users will either. Another example, if I search for “contact form” (which I’m guessing is a pretty common search) then the Contact Form 7 plugin (which is one of the best free ones) isn’t even on the first page – it’s half way down the second page. And Ninja Forms is nowhere to be found! I think the problem that this could lead to is a lot of people who don’t know what the good plugins are called end up installing a bunch of subpar plugins which show up top in the search and subsequently getting frustrated. Categories might help, but only if the user knows which categories to use. A lot of WordPress users aren’t very technical.
Anyway I don’t want to harp on about it as it sounds like some good changes are coming soon and appreciate your hard work! I just wanted to give my 2 cents 🙂
Jollerbills: from the site owner side I completely agree with you on this case.
From developer side – based on the last 2 days – We haven’t seen any loss of traffic to our plugins, so Otto was right when he told that developers don’t understand how people are searching for plugins. Maybe in the future the plugins directory will be more transparent and give extra feedback to developers to make better plugins and to help understand our users.
Welp, like I said before, the changes I made were temporary in the first place. A vision of things to come, more or less. Expect much greater changes with the new engine. But, yeah, that will take a while. Don’t expect perfection. 😉
