Post B5ouujL2w2XvZauD3o by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
 (DIR) More posts by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
 (DIR) Post #B5ourutNWR1iXOcemG by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
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       Modern life is rubbish. Case in point; #WebSearch. I just tried to search;greens.org.nz spokespeopleI think it's pretty clear what I'm after. I want results from that website *only*, that include the keyword 'spokespeople', right?#DuckDuckGo gives me thier Wikipedia page, a bunch of spokespeople announcements from 2023, an ActionStation page on alcocol policy that lists Judith Collins as National leader, and the list of spokespeople for the *NZ Labour* party, FFS. Useless.(1/?)#search
       
 (DIR) Post #B5ourvFiBOtJef4UaW by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
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       Searching @Mojeek for;greens.org.nz spokespeople... gives me a similar list of irrelevant guff. Only 2 of which even mention the Greens (both Wikipedia and a WP clone).StartPage at least gives me some stuff related to the Greens. But it mostly ignores the "spokespeople" keyword, and the stuff is does give me related to that it all years old.(2/?)
       
 (DIR) Post #B5ourvSpOdNoJLCy24 by Mojeek@mastodon.social
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       @strypey we're working on semantic search to improve this so keep the faith 🙏 Startpage is powered by Bing and Google whilst Mojeek has gone to the effort of building its own search index 😀
       
 (DIR) Post #B5ousKnxBE8Uu6Hgvo by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
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       Brave Search results are dominated by text generated by a Trained #MOLE, which confidently announces that Darleen Tana is a Greens spokesperson. Despite the fact that they were ejected from the party and from Parliament 2 years ago. Again, based on an announcement from 2023, not the current list that's *somewhere* on the Greens website I've supplied the domain name (surely, must be, isn't it?).None of the search results listed under this proud nonsense are relevant to my query.(3/?)
       
 (DIR) Post #B5ouujL2w2XvZauD3o by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
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       I'm getting desperate now. Yandex also vomits up a list of vaguely related but irrelevant pages. As does Baidu. As does the Searx instance at search.disroot.org.I mean, seriously, this is not a hard query. I've done most of the work for them by specifying the site I want to search, and what I want to find there. It's not rocket science.The really frustrating thing is, web search *used to work*! Why can no one do seem to do it effectively anymore?(4/4)
       
 (DIR) Post #B5oyM5Bs673N1kLfGa by strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz
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       (1/2)@Mojeek > we're working on semantic search to improve thisCan you expand on that?> Mojeek has gone to the effort of building its own search indexGood on you. But that's only useful if the interface the person searching it with helps them find what they're looking for. For a start;* assuming a "+" between any 2 search terms, unless that returns no results.* where a URL is supplied, searching only under that domain, unless that returns no results* being verbose about all that
       
 (DIR) Post #B6RvelWwhAcGrBrNPk by Mojeek@mastodon.social
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       @strypey We're constantly trying to improve and adding more semantic matching is one area that shows promise. We're hoping to have this in live testing within a month.
       
 (DIR) Post #B6Rvjmbe7gAPdpS1Q0 by Mojeek@mastodon.social
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       @strypey Using the 'site' operator is the preferred method here, e.g. https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=site%3Agreens.org.nz+spokespeople returns no results for the exact word. Without the 'site' operator we do display a notice pointing out the following results, although matched, were deemed not very relevant.Using two words without the 'site' operator does return the site top: https://www.mojeek.com/search?q=greens.org.nz+spokes+peopleAs mentioned, we're constantly trying to improve and feedback like yours drives it, so thanks and points taken.
       
 (DIR) Post #B6S2WHLnibQMcPXzma by Mojeek@mastodon.social
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       @strypey > assuming a "+" between any 2 search terms, unless that returns no results.Assuming "+" is the default behaviour for Mojeek whether it returns results or not. Sometimes this can appear not the case due to mistakes in stemming, page changes/update cycle, etc. But should be the case a majority of the time. This might change with the upcoming updates.