https://www.reddit.com/r/reddit/comments/t9nuaz/whats_up_with_reddit_search_episode_v_relevance/
created by anon-axolotl on 08/03/2022 at 18:48 UTC
1005 upvotes, 57 top-level comments (showing 25)
You may have noticed the recent updates to how Search looks and feels, but there are also a ton of relevance improvements happening behind the scenes. Read on to learn about recent signal experiments that have improved the relevance of subreddit and post search results.
MMM stands for Minimum Must Match—the number of search terms that have to match in a post in order for you to get results. Previously, we required all search terms to match in order to return search results on post searches. So if you typed “how to go to the moon”, all six of those terms would have to be present in a post for it to show up in your results. This means many of you were getting bad results or no results for longer searches.
Now that requirement is gone. Even if there isn’t a match on all terms, you’ll see search results from posts that contain some of your terms.
Despite improving relevance for the vast majority of searches, we found that we had a few hiccups when it came to specific types of searches using things like boolean operators or advanced search syntax (for those who may not be familiar, boolean operators are a set of words such as AND, OR, NOT, etc. you can use to limit, broaden, and better define their search results[1].) The following searches were affected:
1: https://www.reddit.com/wiki/search/#wiki_field_search
Similar to the boolean case, the syntax for filtering query results by particular fields was affected by MMM and needed to be updated as well. Now you can filter by using syntax such as 'subreddit:potato baked potato recipes' to get search results for baked potato recipes within the potato subreddit.
To measure the impact of the change, we ran a two week experiment comparing the minimum match changes to the search experience without them. Searchers in the experiment got “no results” 60% less often than those outside the experiment for queries that had more than three terms. Additionally, there was a 1.6% increase in clicks on post results and 0.4% increase in clicks in the top 10 post positions, signaling that searchers were also finding what they were looking for more often and more easily. Improving results on longer search terms is also exciting, because it gives our search tool helpful information that can be leveraged in future machine learning experiments.
In order to get search results, Reddit relies on a bunch of different factors, the most obvious of which is whether or not your search term matches the subreddit name. But there are also other qualities that factor into the ranking of results, like size and description of the subreddit. The subreddit signals improvement uses redditors’ clicks and interactions on search results as a signal of what might be valuable for you.
For example, if 30 other people clicked on the fourth subreddit result when they searched for “backpacking”, the next time someone else searched for “backpacking”, we are more likely to show the fourth subreddit at the top position in results.
We found that more people were finding subreddits they were looking for; using subreddit signals resulted in a 7% increase in clicks on subreddits and a 7–9% increase in clicks on the top 1–10 subreddit search results. We also noticed that people are visiting and staying on subreddits 0.8% more often with the signals work enabled.
Relevance improvements for Reddit Search will be ongoing, and these experiments are just the beginning. As we continue to iterate on and improve search relevance, we’ll share our findings here. Keep an eye on the web and here in r/reddit to learn more.
Thanks for sticking around. As always, if you have feedback, questions, or ideas about what you’d like to see from Search, share them in the comments below!
Comment by gandalf45435 at 08/03/2022 at 19:01 UTC
427 upvotes, 5 direct replies
I'm just glad the search function is getting addressed. It's the longest running joke about Reddit. You are better off searching google and including "reddit" in your search function to find what you're looking for.
Comment by beenoc at 08/03/2022 at 19:07 UTC
39 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I've noticed something with the search where it almost feels like it needs to have higher MMM if you switch off the "relevance" sort. To give a nice and topical example, if I go to /r/eldenring and search "Sword of Night and Flame," the default (relevance) results are all about the sword, in order of whatever combination of upvotes and recency and comment count and whatever else the relevance algorithm uses. However, if I switch to "top" or "new" or other sort fields, now the results are damn near every post ever made on the subreddit with the words "sword," "of," "night," "and," or "flame" in the post body or comments.
I have no idea if there's a term for this, or possible causes, or possible solutions, but it is a bit weird when you search for something, find some posts about it from a year ago or whatever, say "I wonder if there's anything newer about this," and sort by new only to find a pile of completely unrelated and irrelevant posts. Just something for your search engine nerds to keep in mind and/or be aware of.
Comment by Kahzgul at 08/03/2022 at 19:23 UTC
56 upvotes, 3 direct replies
I frequently want to search my own post history. I know I said something about widgets four or five years ago... but I can't find it. Is there a way to limit searches to a specific user (or specific subreddit)?
Comment by [deleted] at 08/03/2022 at 18:53 UTC*
97 upvotes, 5 direct replies
[removed]
Comment by playfulmessenger at 08/03/2022 at 20:51 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
What if those 30 people clicked on an incidental click bait title?
My mom’s backpacking woes.
It might be about a vacation or a product or a story about mom’s dream or future wishes. People may click into it for reason A and find Reason B, but now the AI has been trained on the wrong user intent.
So relevant results may degrade over time.
Comment by ButINeedThatUsername at 08/03/2022 at 19:03 UTC
10 upvotes, 2 direct replies
That's... Good to know! With this in place isn't search result manipulation a thing to worry about?
Comment by Uister59 at 08/03/2022 at 19:06 UTC
14 upvotes, 0 direct replies
good feature
Comment by fathornyhippo at 08/03/2022 at 22:00 UTC
8 upvotes, 2 direct replies
May you please replace the new explore tab and go back to the communities tab?
This new design happened to me a few days ago for the worst. :(
Profile flipped from left side to the right side.
The communities on swipe left now (for iOS) NEVER loads!!! I just get “error: failed to load” over and over again!!!
I have no idea what happened to mod feeds/mod queue. If it’s in the community swipe left, then I’m doomed bc ever since the design change, it does not load.
I have no way of being able to mod the subs I’m in on Reddit app for iOS anymore whereas it used to be very easy and convenient to mod on Reddit iOS.
Please, may you fix these changes? :(
Comment by Sophira at 08/03/2022 at 22:25 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Now you can filter by using syntax such as 'subreddit:potato baked potato recipes' to get search results for baked potato recipes within the potato subreddit.
Would this particular search also get you results for other recipes, since it would find results that only contained the word "recipes" (or, depending on if you're doing stemming, "recipe") as well?
Comment by [deleted] at 08/03/2022 at 19:35 UTC
11 upvotes, 2 direct replies
[deleted]
Comment by the_pwd_is_murder at 08/03/2022 at 22:36 UTC*
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I would rather you focus on indexing and searching comments rather than tuning relevance.
Only being able to run single word searches as has always been the case with Reddit is fine. Anyone who has a proper knowledge if search knows how to refine their terms to the bare minimum, and those without training in search simply can't find the search box and instead rudely insist that the rest of us repeat ourselves over and over.
I always sort the results by newest anyhow. Relevance sorting and recommendations from 3rd party algorithms with conflicts of interest are untrustworthy.
But not indexing comments, which make up the majority of the useful content, is foolish. The answers to most searched questions are not in the submissions. They are in the comments. Especially since you punish self posts so heavily, resulting in most of submission content being pictures which you don't index and can't search either.
Of course it would be easier to index pictures if you threw a bone to us blind users and encouraged descriptions for every picture (and interface icon) like Twitter does. But you punish disabled users even more heavily than self posts so that's never going to happen.
EDIT: correcting typographical horrors
Comment by Sapeurna at 13/03/2022 at 15:12 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Save posts was more practical before
Comment by 650blaze_it at 09/03/2022 at 09:14 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Cool, how about that flippin video player?
Comment by AmConfused324 at 08/03/2022 at 22:19 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Thank God. I can only google “ something something something Reddit” so many times before google refuses to give me any other option other than Reddit results lol
Comment by Rolen47 at 08/03/2022 at 23:43 UTC*
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Why is it that users on my blocked list are visible again? I don't ever want to see their posts. All it does now is put a "Blocked Author" flair next to their post. That's not very useful.
edit: Seems to be fixed now
Comment by Todd_Man at 08/03/2022 at 19:48 UTC
3 upvotes, 0 direct replies
This new update sucks, I can’t even find the top all for today. Discover is terribly made I can’t even imagine that someone thought it was a good design.
Comment by Lampanket at 08/03/2022 at 23:24 UTC
2 upvotes, 0 direct replies
fix the video player
Comment by EnoughLifeguard5180 at 08/03/2022 at 20:01 UTC
0 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Great feature
Comment by Disc_far68 at 08/03/2022 at 23:47 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Why did such a logical feature take so many years to implement?
Comment by fighterace00 at 08/03/2022 at 23:19 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Any chance any of these search functions will be implemented into the API. Notably API used to be about to search posts in a given time frame but now you're limited to the last 1000 which goes very quickly.
Comment by nvmzol at 09/03/2022 at 08:28 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Does anyone know why my profile is now on the right side in the official app? It drives me mad, can’t get used to it
Comment by 2h2p at 15/03/2022 at 18:37 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Why are conservative subreddits allowed to spread and share blatant propaganda?
Comment by Next_Pumpkin1022 at 08/03/2022 at 19:31 UTC
0 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I just feel that the phone version of reddit has a bit of things you should pay attention to, pretty sure many others feel the same.
Comment by companysOkay at 08/03/2022 at 19:29 UTC
-1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Cool
Comment by MeltMore at 08/03/2022 at 20:13 UTC
0 upvotes, 2 direct replies
I love Reddit and I am so grateful for the platform you provide for me to be doing what I do!
I believe it WILL become the leading social media platform! This gives me even more hope! Thank you for the transparency and support!
Eternal blessings onto the reddit admin team, and the mods that keep things civil!