Search Function Improvements

Dear authors,
Dear users,

An update was released this morning. We’ve fixed a few bugs and refined the search function. You can now filter search results more precisely—for example, by category, star rating, or discount.

Keep enjoying the site!

Best regards
Alexander

I think it’s really great that you’re addressing all our issues and trying to fix them as quickly as possible.

Kudos to you Mods.

Best regards, Tanja 

Thanks—I tried it out right away and I’m thrilled.
It makes finding patterns much easier.

The only thing I find a bit confusing is that the drop-down menu for ratings includes the option “5 stars and more”—but you can’t actually give more than 5 stars.

Best regards,
Sylvia

Hi Sylvia,

there are still a few minor (mostly visual) issues—they’ll be resolved in the coming days. We’d love to hear more feedback (including critical comments).

Best regards
Alexander

Oh, great. Thanks, Alexander, and the whole team.
I’ll have to try it out right away.

Thank you. This makes searching so much easier. 

Thank you so much—that’s great!

Just for fun, I entered the term “Christmas.” It’s amazing what comes up—things that, in my opinion, have nothing to do with Christmas. Maybe we should encourage the authors to use meaningful tags. Sure, I could tag everything with “Christmas”—after all, you can give anything as a Christmas gift. But does that make sense? When I type in “Christmas,” I’m looking for things with a Christmas theme, right? As a customer, you feel pretty cheated, and you soon lose interest in searching.

@ruthk
We’ll still address this topic.
Best regards, Mario

Great! Thank you so much!

Since critical feedback was also requested: This update doesn’t do anything for me.
I hope you’re still working on the search function.

@InnasVorlagenshop
Here’s what I’ve noticed:
The search function works great. I tried it today with rather unusual search terms, and the results were almost flawless.
The real problem is the category settings and the choice of TAGS when uploading a new item.
If every author only entered the relevant and correct information, we would have a very precise search function. But as long as many items are simply given the tag "Christmas" even though they actually have nothing to do with Christmas, the search cannot work.
Here’s a fictitious example, but one that is actually done in a comparable way:
A crochet pattern for a sweater with an owl motif is additionally placed in the Amigurumi --> Owls category. That cannot and should not happen.
And unfortunately, according to this principle, these are not isolated cases; it is common practice.

Conclusion: The search function is not currently the problem; the category settings in the item are, and those are set by the author.

As already mentioned above, I will work something out about this tomorrow to get it under control.

Best regards, Mario

Hi Mario. I guess we search differently.

OK, here’s my example: I’m looking for a women’s dress. So I type in that phrase and get the response: “Not found.” Then I type “dress” into the search bar—and see all the dresses, even for amigurumi, which is totally correct—I did want to see dresses.
Well, then I enter “dress” and “woman,” and presto—I not only get all the dresses, but also everything related to women.

Maybe I’m just too clueless, so please explain to me how I can find a women’s dress here :-).

Best regards, Inna

I’d be happy to take a look at your example

Inna,

now I get it—you’re referring to the feature where search results are narrowed down with additional search terms instead of becoming broader.
I’ve already made a note of that, but it’s only really useful if the categories are organized.

“Women’s dress” isn’t found because there’s no category with that name, and presumably no one has tagged it that way either.

That’s exactly what I mean. I think if that worked, you could ignore a few incorrect results.

It’s fine that “women’s dress” isn’t found. The problem is that there’s no other way to find the right one.

Good morning,

I just noticed that searching for a shop name doesn’t return any results. :-(

Best regards, Birgit 

@ Birgit

Yes, that actually works really well. I’ve tried two names so far. It just doesn’t work with your name because a lot of people have probably entered “schönes” and “Wolle” as tags. That’s why all sorts of results show up. That’s how I’d explain it.

Best regards

I’ve tested it myself now. I’d still like to see subcategories to choose from.

When I click on “Crochet” under “Product Categories” on the sidebar, can I then select, for example, “Children” and then, in the next step, “Clothing”? But then I get stuck when I’m looking for a piece of clothing with a specific motif—let’s stick with “owl” for now. So I have to click through everything again until I find a piece of clothing with the owl motif.

If I enter the desired motif (owl) in the search function, I can select “crochet,” but I get every result that matches that criteria. And that’s a huge number of results.

This is just one example, but I’d love to be able to search in a way that lets me narrow down the results as much as possible.

And I’ll take your advice about the categories to heart—I’ll go through all my patterns by next week to make sure the categories and tags really only apply directly to those specific patterns. I hope I’ve been doing it that way so far, but it’s definitely better to double-check.

Dear authors,

thank you for the feedback!

@Inna, you’re right. Try “women’s dress.” We could still work with synonyms here. I’ll create a ticket right away. We’ll check what can be implemented.

@Birgit, the minus signs in your name seem to be interfering with the search. Don’t change your name. I’ll create a ticket right away, and we’ll see what can be done.

Further suggestions are very welcome.

Best regards
Alexander

Thanks, Claudia and Alexander. 

I’ve tried it out some more now as well. 

I always enter the tags “Beautiful things made of wool”
“Beautiful-things-made-of-wool”  and 
“Beautifulthingsmadeofwool”
. 

If you write my name as one word, you can find me too. Before, all 3 options worked.)

I’ve now searched for other names too. As long as there are no spaces or hyphens in the name, everything works. 

So there’s still something not quite right with spaces in the tags either. 

Best regards, Birgit 

@Schoenes-aus-Wolle

Hi Birgit,

I’ve tested it now, too.
“p-pekee” works with and without a hyphen (“p-pekee” or “p pekee”),
and “mi-li” works as well (with and without a hyphen).

However, if the name gets any longer, it stops working.
That’s very strange!

Yeah, great. It’s me again. :-D

Poor Birgit, but I’m sure your problem will be solved as well.

Thanks, Mario—finally, someone feels sorry for me. :-D

If it really only affects me, there’s no rush.

I just won’t search for “Schönes aus Wolle” anymore, but directly for pattern XY.  

@Alexander, the women’s dress was just an example. That example stands for everything I’ve ever searched for here and not found. I’m simply trying to see the whole thing from the customer’s point of view, for people who are used to Google: I don’t want to have to work with synonyms; I want to be able to type in whatever comes to mind, words that are part of my vocabulary. For example, I really can’t stand it when someone calls me a lady; to me, that word smells of mothballs and perm curls, so I would never search for a ladies’ dress for myself, because I associate a ladies’ dress with something very specific, and that is not what I’m looking for. All customers have quirks like that or similar ones, so it has to work in a way that gives you several options for reaching your goal.
But you already wrote that you’re working on it, so now all that remains is to wait.

Dear Authors,
Dear Users,

The star-rating labels have been improved.

1 star and up
2 stars and up
...
5 stars

More improvements are coming.

Thank you very much for all your feedback.

Best regards
Alexander

I just tried searching for the term “lion.” All the lions show up, but so do giraffes (including mine). I took a closer look at my giraffe and Streifgetier’s giraffe. We’ve both been careful to use only tags that are actually related to giraffes, not lions. The project names are also unambiguous for both of us.

But: The full-text search found the lions in our descriptions.

Now I’m wondering whether full-text search for search queries makes sense. I’m asking this in a completely neutral way, since I really don’t know if this is good or bad. Finding giraffes when searching for lions is still somewhat understandable—the topics do go together, after all—and besides, the selection of projects is manageable. But there are surely other terms where this gets out of hand. Hmmm...

Ahem. Try entering the search term “bear.” You’ll get a colorful result, but not exactly bear-related. ;-)

@roticanai
I just tried it. It’s really interesting to see what comes up. But I kind of suspect that the search function also looks for every “Ä” in a word. I can’t think of any other explanation, because I also looked at the tags for patterns that have nothing to do with “bear,” and there weren’t any bears in them. But there were a few “Ä”s here and there...

It does work for “Teddybär” or “Bärchen,” though. That doesn’t fit the “Ä” theory (but who knows, maybe there’s something to it after all… ;-))

@roticanai
We’re already looking into this issue and are checking the relevance of the product descriptions.
We’re actively working on the search function, but it will take a little more time as we’re still setting up the technical requirements needed to effectively address the problem.

Dear Mario, all good :-) We’ll sit back and let you dig around. It’s really great that you’re tweaking things in every nook and cranny!

Yes, I agree.
@Mario and all the other CP team members working behind the scenes—thank you very much. ☺☺☺