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Show HN: A search engine that lets you refine your queries

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Re: Show HN: A search engine that lets you refine your queries

#11

Post by Ketan-fullstack »

jrussbowman wrote: post #5
Ketan-fullstack wrote: post #2

Hi, I have been working on this search engine for the last few months. After you search for something, you can select up to 4 tags to further refine your search. Feedback please :)

Good luck with the project. Out of curiosity are you crawling and indexing yourself or using a search api? It's really fast, I like that. The amount of tags to choose from is a bit overwhelming. Hope you get good responses here, the couple times I've posted my search engine I haven't gotten a lot of feedback.

Thanks for the feedback!

I am partially indexing on my own but as of now mostly relying on Bing API.

Yes, the number of tags and their quality is an issue. The current keyword suggestion algorithm will get better as more and more people use it.

I would love to checkout your search engine if you have a link handy

Re: Show HN: A search engine that lets you refine your queries

#12

Post by Ketan-fullstack »

senectus1 wrote: post #7

hot damn! Please add the ability to scroll down the popped up suggestions with cursor keys!

Thanks!

keyboard input on the auto suggest drop down will be there on the next update, it’s already a work in progress!

Again, thanks for your feedback!

Re: Show HN: A search engine that lets you refine your queries

#13

Post by Cilvic »

Ketan-fullstack wrote: post #11
jrussbowman wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with the project. Out of curiosity are you crawling and indexing yourself or using a search api? It's really fast, I like that. The amount of tags to choose from is a bit overwhelming. Hope you get good responses here, the couple times I've posted my search engine I haven't gotten a lot of feedback.

Thanks for the feedback! I am partially indexing on my own but as of now mostly relying on Bing API. Yes, the number of tags and their quality is an issue. The current keyword suggestion algorithm will get better as more and more people use it. I would love to checkout your search engine if you have a link handy

it was in his profile: http://www.unscatter.com/

Re: Show HN: A search engine that lets you refine your queries

#14

Post by Cilvic »

Ketan-fullstack wrote: post #9
visarga wrote: post #3

It's fast and apparently wide enough, or at least I found what I searched for. Summarisation is nice. UI: The refining keywords are hard to read because they are not sorted. The gradient borders around search results are a bit too much, better go with something more understated. It would be nice to tell a few things about the underlying technology. Are you using other search engines under the hood? How large is the i…

Thank you for your feedback! I take both your points about the UI. Tags are a bit overwhelming. i am working on solving that problem. Underlying Tech: i am using clojure/redis/mongo on the backed. React/redux on the front end. I am partially using my own index but for the most part (especially for new searches) relying on Bing api.

I'm contemplating offering "indexing as a service" could you share whether you at any point thought about buying a (partial) index? And if so, what are parameters you'd like to set: source pages, intervall etc. And lastly how to consume the index.

Re: Show HN: A search engine that lets you refine your queries

#15

Post by Cilvic »

It seemed to work Ok.

I found the number of tags far too many to be really useful. I'm searching for an answer/not more problems.

UI wise I was irritated, that clicking the tag only had a visible effect after I moved the mouse away. First time i clicked (toggled on), then clicked again (toggled off).

I was thinking about a search engine that would help me chose the right direction of there are multiple interpretations.

My test was searching for "quasar" and seeing if the vue js framework would be offered as tag (which it's not). But it's actually result number 3?

How are the tags related to the results?

I've also found it irritating that selecting the tags need to be "applied" without having an idea of what it will do, or how many results there are.

Maybe apply the selected tag immediately and keep the tags in the same UI location (don't reload them, like you currently do after applying).

I'm not sure what's the perfect search example is for this. Because narrowing down by keyword is easy. Here it's almost like it helps you discover keywords/tags that are yet unknown?

Re: Show HN: A search engine that lets you refine your queries

#17

Post by senectus1 »

Ketan-fullstack wrote: post #12
senectus1 wrote: post #7

hot damn! Please add the ability to scroll down the popped up suggestions with cursor keys!

Thanks! keyboard input on the auto suggest drop down will be there on the next update, it’s already a work in progress! Again, thanks for your feedback!

would like a search field in the filter panel that lets me search of key words in the keyword list.

yes I know I can ctrl F, but if I didn't have to that would be faster :-P

Re: Show HN: A search engine that lets you refine your queries

#18

Post by dotancohen »

Nice job. Linux and Ubuntu related searches have very relevant results.

The only constructive criticism that I have would be regarding presentation. There is far too little contrast between the results URL and the white background. And I don't know what markup language you're using but results cannot be opened in a new tab via middle click (current Firefox, current Ubuntu). Not to mention that my Tridactyl extension is completely useless on the site.

Please, just serve results in normal HTML and let the browser handle the presentation. For every clever behavior you think you're adding, you are actually breaking a feature that somebody uses.

Re: Show HN: A search engine that lets you refine your queries

#19

Post by dotancohen »

dotancohen wrote: post #18

Nice job. Linux and Ubuntu related searches have very relevant results. The only constructive criticism that I have would be regarding presentation. There is far too little contrast between the results URL and the white background. And I don't know what markup language you're using but results cannot be opened in a new tab via middle click (current Firefox, current Ubuntu). Not to mention that my Tridactyl extension…

More constructive criticism: This is probably not how you want the "Q&A communities" tag to display:

  > Q&A communities
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