https://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/mharom/whats_up_with_reddit_search/
created by anon-axolotl on 31/03/2021 at 17:10 UTC
234 upvotes, 42 top-level comments (showing 25)
We’re improving Reddit search and want your help. Take this quick survey to share your thoughts[1], and read on to learn about improvements we’ve made and will be making in the months ahead.
1: https://forms.gle/MRYG1uVQkc8w2TNL9
Hi Reddit!
Over the past few months, the Search team here at Reddit has been steadily working on creating a search experience that can support the millions of posts, communities, and people that make up our platform.
For those of you who are more engineeringly inclined (is engineeringly a word? Well, it is now), that means strengthening infrastructure. For those of you who aren’t as familiar with infrastructure development (haha, lucky you), it’s basically about creating a strong foundation for our search tools so that they can handle the huge amount of requests we get constantly throughout the day (AKA, making sure Reddit search doesn’t break or completely go down.) These same improvements also set the foundation for future search relevance improvements so that Redditors can more easily find the content and communities they love.
But that’s just the beginning…
Now that the foundation is in place, the next phase for Reddit search is improving the search experience in ways that actually deliver better search results and help Redditors find the content they want more quickly.
This will include:
But this list is incomplete…what else should we add to it? To get to a truly effective search experience, we’d like to hear more from you. Take this quick survey[2] to let us know what you think of Reddit search, what is and isn’t working for you, and how you think we can make it better.
2: https://forms.gle/MRYG1uVQkc8w2TNL9
As we make improvements, we’ll be sharing our progress and learnings with the community and gaining more feedback along the way. We know Reddit search can use more TLC and we’re excited to work with you to make it easier for Redditors to find the communities and content they’re looking for.
We’ll be sticking around to answer a few questions, and hear your thoughts.
Thanks ahead of time for all your feedback and comments!
Comment by didgerdiojejsjfkw at 31/03/2021 at 17:13 UTC
121 upvotes, 1 direct replies
My god an update that is useful my eyes must be deceiving me.
Good job search team ;)
Comment by shiruken at 31/03/2021 at 17:53 UTC
51 upvotes, 4 direct replies
Huzzah! I'd definitely recommend offering at least the same functionality as PushShift's RedditSearch[1]. Being able to restrict results by custom date ranges is quite useful.
It'd also be useful to have searching by flair made more accessible and reliable.
Comment by didgerdiojejsjfkw at 31/03/2021 at 17:16 UTC*
57 upvotes, 5 direct replies
Will it be better than using google and just adding site:reddit.com on the end though?
Also, hello new admin 👋
Comment by jeypiti at 31/03/2021 at 19:17 UTC
23 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I submitted these points through the survey but posting them here for further discussion can't hurt.
My four feature requests:
1. To echo what u/SheeEttin said, including snippets and/or highlighting what exactly matched your search terms. This would massively speed up the process of finding exactly what you're looking for.
2. Introduce a sort by oldest option. As a mod, it can be important to find the first occurrence of a topic on a certain subreddit. Right now, there's no (good) option to do that: Google doesn't offer such an option and it doesn't have access to the full Reddit database in the first place & Pushshift will also struggle if the content is old enough.
3. Introduce some of Pushshift search parameters. Pushshift is an amazing tool as is, especially for someone that develops Reddit bots, but its database only goes back so far. Naturally, it would be best to have all of Pushshift's parameters but date ranges & the ability to search comments just as effectively are most important to me personally. As a nice side-effect, additional search parameters could also be an invaluable tool to 3rd-party researchers.
4. I understand this is simply a pipe dream but reverse image search would be great. Finding the OP of a certain image is something that I do quite regularly as a mod and reverse image search is the only option to really do that. Google works well enough in most cases but again, it doesn't have access to the full Reddit database.
P.S.: I'm very excited to hear that comment search is being worked on and hope this will at least be subreddit-wide or even side-wide.
Comment by [deleted] at 31/03/2021 at 17:57 UTC*
42 upvotes, 3 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by Omnigreen at 31/03/2021 at 18:52 UTC
11 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I just want to be able to find all the subs with a specific word in the title and not see tons of irrelevant subs without this word, thanks.
Comment by TheBananaKing at 31/03/2021 at 21:19 UTC
12 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I just want to be able to search in my own comments / messages to find that thing I said once.
Second priority is being able to search for comments by others. I understand there might be some reluctance to implement profile-diving, but at least being able to search for comments by content even if you don't enable by-user would be good.
The most interesting and relevant content on reddit isn't the content people link to, it's the conversations that content provokes.
Comment by iiw at 31/03/2021 at 17:20 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Any chance of cloudsearch syntax coming back?
Comment by Cornicum at 31/03/2021 at 18:23 UTC
6 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Thank you for doing this, filled out the survey.
is there a chance you are going to add more/easier search paramaters?
cause I know there are/used to be commands to filter things further than just the standard search allows, but I'd love to be able to exclude subreddits, or include/exclude certain (subreddit) topics.
Comment by titusjan at 31/03/2021 at 20:03 UTC*
6 upvotes, 1 direct replies
In the search of the old reddit you can enter the URL of a web page and it will then list all posts that have this URL as topic. This is great for finding reposts and existing discussions about a particular web page.
For example, let's say I just discovered that the original Space Jam website from 1996 is still operational. In the old reddit I can just enter the complete URL (https://www.spacejam.com/[1]) in the search bar and it will give me the list of reddit posts about this page[2] that other people already posted.
2: https://old.reddit.com/submit?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.spacejam.com%2F
It would be great it this functionality was added to the new reddit search.
Comment by ivana-sarevska at 31/03/2021 at 22:35 UTC
11 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Submitted a response, I know you can improve it! I believe in you admins :)
Comment by tumultuousness at 31/03/2021 at 18:39 UTC
4 upvotes, 1 direct replies
So something I wondered, should there be an indication of where a user searches when taking this survey? For example, I still use the old design, and further, I still use legacy search - so by default subreddit searching is in a separate place, and so I really don't often search for subreddits. I was just wondering if there were potentially any other differences in searching that might come up, depending on if you use legacy search or not, or use the redesign (which I imagine would have more features) search.
Also the implication that some of these suggestions might not make it back to the old design, so indicating that might be even more helpful haha.
Comment by ahackercalled4chan at 31/03/2021 at 22:03 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
No way!
Comment by Zechert at 31/03/2021 at 18:56 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Can you make it so that we can search in custom feeds? That would be awesome
Comment by searching_snoo at 31/03/2021 at 22:55 UTC*
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Cant wait to work on some of those exciting projects in the summer ;)
Comment by MarktpLatz at 01/04/2021 at 00:13 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
what else should we add to it?
I do not know whether this is *technically* where you are going, but being allowed to search in our own inbox/outbox would come *really* handy.
Comment by N1cknamed at 31/03/2021 at 18:20 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Very glad to hear this. It's long overdue!
Somewhat (but not really) related, have you noticed that the dates for reddit results on google are often messed up? Not sure if it's reddits or googles fault, but it's quite annoying. Sometimes they're off by years.
Comment by gmes78 at 31/03/2021 at 19:44 UTC
3 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Will we be able to filter posts posted between two arbitrary dates? Last week/month/year often isn't enough.
Comment by talkingwires at 31/03/2021 at 23:03 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
My biggest feature request:
Make the search bar at the top of every page on New Reddit search for *actual content* by default, and not *subreddits names*. The URL bar is millimeters away if I wanted a specific subreddit. Why it's set up the way it is is beyond me.
Comment by [deleted] at 31/03/2021 at 23:49 UTC*
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
so even if someone types something different than what they’re looking for, we can still surface relevant results.
Comment by InitiatePenguin at 01/04/2021 at 02:16 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
* Improving searching within a community on desktop
Does this mean that if I click into the search bar from within a subreddit *it will search that subreddit*, rather than giving me sitewide results with a little button at the top to restrict to the sub it knows I'm already in?
I also want more extensive functionality to search what was popular during any given time in a community.
Comment by fishbiscuit13 at 31/03/2021 at 19:23 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Please consider taking more cues from the old search than the new one. I changed back to the old search immediately because of the inefficient layout and reduced information in the new version.
Comment by [deleted] at 31/03/2021 at 17:53 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Comment by Raerth at 01/04/2021 at 01:56 UTC
2 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Not sure 1st April was the best time to make this announcement.
Unless it was the perfect time to make this announcement.
Comment by haltingpoint at 01/04/2021 at 02:13 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Will gender from the latest announcement be a signal you use in your models? If so, how do you plan to avoid reinforcing gender stereotypes?
Also, as part of your overhaul, are you planning to add any ad placements? I'm frankly shocked there aren't any now and knocking on every wooden surface I can find.