Main site.... how does it search?

I don't understand how the search works on the main site. I have just been looking for the autodrive mod, so because I wasn't sure if it was autodrive or auto-drive, I thought "I'll enter auto, because that's guaranteed to hit both" but it didn't.

It can find Real Taxi Adverisement 1, by autofan999 but it can't find VAutodrive. That makes me think it is only searching by starts-with, instead of contains. Is there any potential for the main site search to improve in any way?

I am now starting to think that the reason we get questions asking for mods that do actually exist on the site, is not because people are being lazy, it's simply because even if they enter the correct search term, they still might not find what they are looking for.

I have to wonder how many people come to the site, search for something, don't find it and then just leave, thinking "Well they don't have what I want, so I'll go to another site instead".

ikt

The searching is less than optimal. I just use Google instead.

Willief23

@LeeC2202 i agree the site search sucks, half the time i search for a mod or car i downloaded in the past it doesnt show up till one or two pages from the end of the list.

Shaezbreizh

I agree, if we can't get subcategory to split the thing and make it clear , then we need a correct search function.

Cyron43

@LeeC2202 Gee I haven't recognized this before. @rappo needs to fix this. Shouldn't be a big thing.

rappo

Thanks for the suggestions everyone - I know the site search has been broken for some time, I'll work on fixing it soon.

ReNNie

@rappo said in Main site.... how does it search?:

I'll work on fixing it soon.

You sound like me when I'm asked to fix something around the house... Soon is quite relative

LeFix

@rappo
please add an option to search in a category.
I just wanted to find the flash mod (scirpt) and like 99% of the results are some loading screens, textures, models etc.

HeySlickThatsMe

Agree with everyone (Sry for a bit of bump)
It searches like by description , author , name
so if you write L.A and someone has wrote L.A in the description or a comment like this , or his name is/has L.A in it , then it will show

rappo

SO! I think I've made some pretty good changes to the search functionality...

@LeeC2202 said in Main site.... how does it search?:

It can find Real Taxi Adverisement 1, by autofan999 but it can't find VAutodrive. That makes me think it is only searching by starts-with, instead of contains. Is there any potential for the main site search to improve in any way?

I've updated this now, so that it's not just a wildcard search based on the beginning of a word. Example here: https://www.gta5-mods.com/search/auto

And if you're not interested in vehicles with "Autovista" in the name, you can now use the dropdown to sort by category to filter it to only be scripts: https://www.gta5-mods.com/search/scripts/auto

@LeFix said in Main site.... how does it search?:

please add an option to search in a category.
I just wanted to find the flash mod (scirpt) and like 99% of the results are some loading screens, textures, models etc.

So this request is also done, as I mentioned above: https://www.gta5-mods.com/search/scripts/flash

@HeySlickThatsMe said in Main site.... how does it search?:

It searches like by description , author , name
so if you write L.A and someone has wrote L.A in the description or a comment like this , or his name is/has L.A in it , then it will show

Sorry, but this won't be done for now. It'll just be searching the file name and author name, not the description or comments. Here's an author name example: https://www.gta5-mods.com/search/jedijosh

rappo

Oh and I've also corrected issues with accent marks/other non-standard English characters:
https://www.gta5-mods.com/search/reventon
https://www.gta5-mods.com/search/turk+polis

And also corrected some common misspellings like "ferari", "lamborgini" and "scaina"

If anybody finds anymore funky query/result combos please let me know so I can work on fixing those, too

@rappo said in Main site.... how does it search?:

I've made some very good changes to the search functionality...

I think your first line should have been that, because that's pretty much spot on IMO.

Making the search be not restricted to just matching the start of the word and adding the category filter, has transformed the search into a tool of much-awesome-ness.

HeySlickThatsMe

@Rappo i said that the current searching searches like that

rappo

So if you've been trying to access the site for the past couple hours you may have noticed it was slow or even received an error when loading a page. Basically, this search changed screwed some things up. I had to revert it, and will be investigating how I can re-enable these search changes without causing further issues. Sorry for the inconvenience!