Search Results Bad

[mostynL 8]

Hello,

 

When I run a search, the results are not predictable. For example I search for "maggie" and then "songs", I get at the top of the list a bunch of songs that do not have the word maggie in them. Instead it's a bunch of songs from the album 'offend maggie'. Then if I change it to "Maggie May" I get only one song result, even though I have a few versions of it by different artists. The search featureis basically unusable. 

 

[Luke 37066]

HI, does the album title have the word Maggie in it? That is also factored into the search results.

[mostynL 8]

Hi Luke, yes the album has the word maggie in it.  And honestly, the album title should not be a factor at all if I search for 'songs'. The song "Earguru Guru" is not maggie even if it's on the album Offend Maggie.

 

But also, maybe the relevance order is the problem. I know most db server suites have their own text search relevance algorithms built in so it's not like anyone has to reinvent the wheel, probably.

 

[Luke 37066]

Ok, the inspiration was taken from mainstream music apps that do the same thing, for example Apple Music. I personally think it’s helpful.

i do agree though that in terms of relevance the songs with Maggie in the title should be at the top.

[GrimReaper 3294]

27 minutes ago, Luke said:

Ok, the inspiration was taken from mainstream music apps that do the same thing, for example Apple Music. I personally think it’s helpful.

i do agree though that in terms of relevance the songs with Maggie in the title should be at the top.

Not using Music, but, following above, went to check how it behaves on TV show episodes - and same (I'd call it wrong) pattern/logic is observed on "Episodes" tab: random episodes of TV show title as search term are listed without respect to actual episode title, number of which could be found lower in the list; considering TV shows with desired search term are already listed both under "Top Results" and "Shows" tabs (making accessing all episodes of those shows one click away), irrelevant episodes (that don't contain search term in title) from same TV shows should be dumped from "Episodes" tab altogether - or at least relevant episodes with search term in title should be listed first.  

Edited August 15, 2023 by GrimReaper

[Luke 37066]

Right it's the same idea with shows and episodes.

[luser 25]

Emby's search functionality, as well as the the presentation of results, has always been lacking. An overhaul of this extremely important system would be awesome. I have a lot of files. Unless I am searching for something very specific, I often find myself searching via cli with gnu find. Hopefully we'll see an improvement sometime soon...

Is the current focus/priority of devs published anywhere? A roadmap? It would be nice to know what was on the dev's radar.

[Luke 37066]

1 hour ago, luser said:

Emby's search functionality, as well as the the presentation of results, has always been lacking. An overhaul of this extremely important system would be awesome. I have a lot of files. Unless I am searching for something very specific, I often find myself searching via cli with gnu find. Hopefully we'll see an improvement sometime soon...

Is the current focus/priority of devs published anywhere? A roadmap? It would be nice to know what was on the dev's radar.

HI, what search improvements would you like to see?

[cul8rmom1 1]

I would like to see a hit when i enter “never ending” and get 0 hits but when I type “neverending” I get a hit.  That would be super nifty. 

[luser 25]

7 hours ago, Luke said:

HI, what search improvements would you like to see?

The biggest issue is search limit. If you have 1000 files containing "Hello There" and search for "Hello there", not all 1000 files will be displayed.

It would also be nice to be able to view results in list view or other view.

Edited August 19, 2023 by luser

[luser 25]

7 hours ago, cul8rmom1 said:

I would like to see a hit when i enter “never ending” and get 0 hits but when I type “neverending” I get a hit.  That would be super nifty. 

It looks like your movies are named "never-ending" and "neverending". So, I would not expect a search for "never ending" to yield results containing these files. Note the space.

Edited August 19, 2023 by luser

[mostynL 8]

2 hours ago, luser said:

It looks like your movies are named "never-ending" and "neverending". So, I would not expect a search for "never ending" to yield results containing these files. Note the space.

 

My expectation from a search is that typically the space is less important unless you add quotes around the search term like "never ending"

1. a word or 'search term' does not have to be a whole word. For example ALK finds tALKing heads, and ENDING does find neverENDING.

2. Words that are exact 'word' match have higher precendence.

Since it's my server and my processor, I would expect better search functionality. (Because a stronger search query takes more CPU)

 

 

Edited August 19, 2023 by mostynL

[luser 25]

18 hours ago, Luke said:

HI, what search improvements would you like to see?

Additionally...
Choosing a library or library's subdirectory to search, instead of always searching every library, would be very helpful.

Edited August 19, 2023 by luser

[cul8rmom1 1]

On 8/19/2023 at 4:01 AM, luser said:

It looks like your movies are named "never-ending" and "neverending". So, I would not expect a search for "never ending" to yield results containing these files. Note the space.

Umm no.  The movie is neverending…. But even if you choose movies as the search catagory and it doesnt find anything it changes the search to everything else i could possibly be for some reason.  You are looking at random hits for a search with “never ending” out of everything else on the server.

[cul8rmom1 1]

On 8/19/2023 at 6:32 AM, mostynL said:

 

My expectation from a search is that typically the space is less important unless you add quotes around the search term like "never ending"

1. a word or 'search term' does not have to be a whole word. For example ALK finds tALKing heads, and ENDING does find neverENDING.

2. Words that are exact 'word' match have higher precendence.

Since it's my server and my processor, I would expect better search functionality. (Because a stronger search query takes more CPU)

 

 

I would think a search with  never ending would include everything that had those two strings never and ending in it… while neverending would only include things with the entire string.   Seems like that would be basic functionality?  It would also be nice to have it stick in the category you choose for the search.  If I am looking for a specific movie name and it doesnt find it… i dont want to see random hits from every other possible thing out there.  Doing that when the category is tv show etc. would make more sense if you are looking for an episode name etc.  so maybe having different behaviors for movie and TV searches.  Or just have it search where you tell it to…. There arent any episode names in movies well… most of them… star wars I know I know :).

You EMBY folks, Thanks for the great software and hard work that you put into this thing… Cheers!

 

[luser 25]

1 hour ago, cul8rmom1 said:

Umm no.  The movie is neverending…. But even if you choose movies as the search catagory and it doesnt find anything it changes the search to everything else i could possibly be for some reason.  You are looking at random hits for a search with “never ending” out of everything else on the server.

The search results make sense. "Neverending" is one word. With your logic, a search for "i" would yield every file with the letter "i" in any word.

Edited August 22, 2023 by luser

[luser 25]

On 8/19/2023 at 11:32 AM, mostynL said:

 

My expectation from a search is that typically the space is less important unless you add quotes around the search term like "never ending"

1. a word or 'search term' does not have to be a whole word. For example ALK finds tALKing heads, and ENDING does find neverENDING.

2. Words that are exact 'word' match have higher precendence.

Since it's my server and my processor, I would expect better search functionality. (Because a stronger search query takes more CPU)

 

 

If Emby increases the results displayed on a search, I would agree. Right now, this would just pollute the few results Emby does display. If you don't have thousands and thousands of files, you probably don't run into this. Hopefully this thread prompts some search improvements.

[cul8rmom1 1]

On 8/22/2023 at 2:02 AM, luser said:

The search results make sense. "Neverending" is one word. With your logic, a search for "i" would yield every file with the letter "i" in any word.

Correct.  You ever try typing i in a file search in say windows?  It should show you every file with the letter I in it.  Thats how it is supposed to work.  How do you think its supposed to work?  To keep it from hitting on everything you can specify a minimum number of letters.  What would you expect typing I in a search field should do?  Not to be disrespectful… but you dont seem to know what you are talking about.

This is a netflix search, a file search on a synology nas array, searches for never ending and neverending on that same nas array.  I could put many many more why dont you try it.  

[luser 25]

7 hours ago, cul8rmom1 said:

Correct.  You ever try typing i in a file search in say windows?  It should show you every file with the letter I in it.  Thats how it is supposed to work.  How do you think its supposed to work?  To keep it from hitting on everything you can specify a minimum number of letters.  What would you expect typing I in a search field should do?  Not to be disrespectful… but you dont seem to know what you are talking about.

This is a netflix search, a file search on a synology nas array, searches for never ending and neverending on that same nas array.  I could put many many more why dont you try it.  

> Thats how it is supposed to work.
There isn't just one way to perform a search. If you're interested in learning, I suggest researching the technical implementation of searches. Looking at netflix's search results doesn't explain how it works. It sounds like you'd like sub-string matching to be implemented. We get it.

> Not to be disrespectful… but you dont seem to know what you are talking about.
Must be. You're obviously an expert, lol.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect