Tell HN: I hate your fuzzy search • Hacker News Board

Re: Tell HN: I hate your fuzzy search

#51

Post by pibaker » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 8:16 PM UTC

tehwebguy wrote: post #38

leros wrote: post #12

HackerNews search respects double quotes around your terms as an exact match, as do many other search engines. For example search for "Amerca" with and without quotes. Without quotes you get content for "America" but with quotes you only get the exact typo match.

Just confirmed! (Is this new? I could swear it didn't work a few months ago when I was looking for stories about Bright Data before all the news articles about the residential proxies.)

This has been a standard feature for nearly all non trivial search engines for at least two decades. I remember this being a feature when I first used google over two decades ago.

Re: Tell HN: I hate your fuzzy search

#52

Post by bpalmerau » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 9:19 PM UTC

pibaker wrote: post #51

tehwebguy wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just confirmed! (Is this new? I could swear it didn't work a few months ago when I was looking for stories about Bright Data before all the news articles about the residential proxies.)

This has been a standard feature for nearly all non trivial search engines for at least two decades. I remember this being a feature when I first used google over two decades ago.

It worked in Alta Vista

Re: Tell HN: I hate your fuzzy search

#53

Post by robocat » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 9:33 PM UTC

yallpendantools wrote: post #26

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #19

I understand the comment, and the spirit, but speaking only for myself, I find the HN search to be quite useful. I'm thinking that double-quotes does, indeed, force an exact search. But fuzzy searches can be extremely useful. Most folks are "fuzzy." Google built a pretty huge empire, on simple, fuzzy search.

> But fuzzy searches can be extremely useful. Most folks are "fuzzy." > > Google built a pretty huge empire, on simple, fuzzy search. I was considering whether OP's complaint is an engineer's thing. My conclusion, based on my own experience is, the more your user base tends toward power-users/highly-skilled use cases, the more deterministic your search should be. A random guy might try to look for a kid's novel serie…

> Harry Potter

Often keeps the same spelling in other countries. Some outliers:

Χάρι Πότερ (Chi as approximation to soft H)

Hare Pota me te Whatu Manapou (written Māori is modern, and it attempts to avoid its foreign roots)

Harrius Potter (Vatican City)

Harijs Poters (Latvia)

Garri Potte (Uzbeki Russki)

Harry's name seems to remain the same in many translations: I assume as part of the overseas marketing of the title.

French changes Snape into Rogue (rogue means haughty and unpleasant), and Dutch turns Dumbledore into Perkamentus (the translator created a new name, and Rowling chose https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/harry-potter-words).

So fuzzy search helps people that don't know English that well.

Edit: When I'm in other countries, I regularly struggle to understand local pronunciation for English names like when someone struggled to tell me who Piratus Draque was, or Cristóbal Colón (Christophorus Columbus). English speaking people are lucky that high-status English has the norm of using people's own original pronounciation and often retains spelling (we butcher some languages more than others, but to me it seems that Spanish butchers all names). Although some get changed on purpose like Kant.

Re: Tell HN: I hate your fuzzy search

#54

Post by archonis » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 9:33 PM UTC

Fannon wrote: post #36

archonis wrote: post #10

Exact match results followed by fuzzy match would cover most use cases, and clear toggles would cover the remaing ones. It boggles the mind why this particular wheel keeps getting reinvented in octoganal shapes.

I tried this actually and wasn't so happy with the results. First you search / index twice and that will cost. You'll have to wait for the slower of the two as you don't want to reorder after already showing the user. You'd need some scoring where precise hits get better score than those only found by fuzzy search. With that it's maybe acceptable, but I personally preferred just being able to switch it easily/quickly…

That's a fair point. Personally, the search latency wouldn't bother me unless search is the primary mode of interaction in the application context.

Re: Tell HN: I hate your fuzzy search

#55

Post by archonis » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 9:34 PM UTC

habitue wrote: post #27

archonis wrote: post #10

Exact match results followed by fuzzy match would cover most use cases, and clear toggles would cover the remaing ones. It boggles the mind why this particular wheel keeps getting reinvented in octoganal shapes.

Exact match on a typo brings up a submission with that typo, which is likely low quality

I guess one man's quirk is another man's feature. (or vice-versa)

Re: Tell HN: I hate your fuzzy search

#56

Post by sieabahlpark » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:10 PM UTC

tehwebguy wrote: post #38

leros wrote: post #12

HackerNews search respects double quotes around your terms as an exact match, as do many other search engines. For example search for "Amerca" with and without quotes. Without quotes you get content for "America" but with quotes you only get the exact typo match.

Just confirmed! (Is this new? I could swear it didn't work a few months ago when I was looking for stories about Bright Data before all the news articles about the residential proxies.)

[dead]

Re: Tell HN: I hate your fuzzy search

#57

Post by gumby » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:44 PM UTC

We need a new term.

To search for something is to believe you’ll probably find it. You’ll ignore anything that isn’t keys if you’re searching for your keys.

Fuzzy search is really the opposite: it will try to return something — anything — if it can’t find what you’re looking for (which it seemingly often doesn’t actually look for anyway). “I couldn’t find your keys, but here’s a pomegranate, a dried up dog turd, and a stray Cheeto from an inaccessible cabinet that hasn’t been opened since before you moved in”

Re: Tell HN: I hate your fuzzy search

#58

Post by cadamsdotcom » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 1:42 AM UTC

mmargenot wrote: post #7

Gmail's search on mobile, where things come up in the quick results only to disappear when I complete the search, is a millstone about my neck.

Fastmail is great, and has fantastic migration tools. I have all 131,000+ emails in Fastmail, nothing left in gmail, I don't miss it.

And the search works and is precise.

Took me months to decide to migrate (even though its on my own domain) but I haven't looked back.

Re: Tell HN: I hate your fuzzy search

#59

Post by downloadram » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 3:02 AM UTC

another potential frustration is that HN (algolia) search also includes in the results any submission or comment by usernames/handles that match the keyword. ..so if a frequent commenter / poweruser matches your search term it becomes very messy to sift through unless you script/ublock out their matching sections

depending on the search intent it could potentially be useful, but a built in excluder option would be great for casual searchers that dont want their criterion to match handles

Re: Tell HN: I hate your fuzzy search

#60

Post by joshspankit » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 3:32 AM UTC

Worst part is I understand that fuzzy search is faster, and the easy next step is fuzzy search > exactly match in the results > only show those (or at least show them first)

Elasticsearch has been a plague for users who already know what they are looking for.