What's your idea?
We have to create drupal.org search more powerful and relavant.
I have noticed when we search for module - Google search result is more accurate than drupal.org website inbuild search.
For Example - Lets serch for Insert Module - In drupal.org, you can see many insert modules are coming, but only "Insert" module is coming after many modules. But in Google, the first one is only "Insert" module.
Now, if you click on modules tab, we are seeing sort by Relevance. Now change it to sort by Most Installed. Still the insert module is not coming in the first.
What are the benefits?
We can search more quickly and effectively.
What are the risks?
We have to rebuild the Search option.
How can we measure the impact of this idea? (metrics)
For Example - Lets search Insert Module - See search result in drupal.org site -
https://www.drupal.org/search/site/insert%20module and Search result in Google - https://www.google.co.in/search?q=drupal+insert+module&oq=drupal+insert+...
Search for Entity Module - See result in drupal.org site -
https://www.drupal.org/search/site/entity?f[0]=ss_meta_type%3Amodule and see result in Google - https://www.google.co.in/search?num=100&newwindow=1&safe=off&q=drupal+en...
Who directly benefits from / will use this improvement? (target audiences)
Drupal user, administrator, website developers and others.
Are additional resources available for discovery/implementation? (volunteer effort, financial backing, etc.)
Yes, Search module is available.
Comments
Improved search is vital
This is a huge need! Even simple searches return better results on Google than they do on Drupal.org. I think it may be because Drupal.org is so big now that it needs more complexity in search functionality -- the kind that is being continually developed by Google. Kris Vanderwater (EclipseGc) has done some high-level search development for a major online retailer, and I heard a presentation last year he did explaining that. Maybe he could advise.
Similar proposal
This proposal is similar, relating to improved search for modules: https://groups.drupal.org/node/313353
Also Need to Improve Filters
The search feature needs to allow for more extensive filtering - to return results for a specific version of Drupal, for example. Ideally, having the forums completely separate based on version would be best (like the APIs are).
And cleaning out dead, outdated, or downright useless posts would be nice as well. The site is too bloated at this point.
I'm not convinced
I'm not convinced this is such a high priority.
There are not many, if any, sites I use regularly that have internal search functionality that is better than just using google.
In my opinion, if you are searching for something on the web, why not use a dedicated search engine, like google.
Google has the benefit of trillions of previous searches and masses of resources to make the more relevant results push to the top.
I do agree that the internal search leaves a lot to be desired, but the solution is not as simple as it seems. To get better results is not just a matter of turning on a search module as is alluded to in the main post.
Drupal.org already uses apache solr for searching and has likely had people spend a fair bit of time setting it up and tweaking it.
We might be able to get some improvements, like increasing the weighting of the module title field higher over the body content, or adding more filter options, but I don't think it's feasible to make enormous improvements and it's a pipe dream to think we can get results better than, or as good as google's.
Search Engines are lagging
Case in point, just after posting my initial comment here, I needed to search for a rather wordy error message. Like you, my first inclination was to go to Google. I typed 'drupal 7 "my long error message here in double quotes"' -- Google got NO hits.
I then searched the same string in drupal.org and the top hit was posted yesterday. Google had not had time to index that page yet. Granted, that won't be the case most of the time, but when an issue is introduced by a newly released version of drupal or contributed modules, many of the posts (and the inevitable searches) will be within hours or a day or two - way before search engines can do their thing. When I do a search, I certainly want to know I'm seeing ALL possible matches.
I realize how complicated the coding could be to create the ultimate search feature for drupal.org, but it wouldn't be that much work to simply force a version selection when creating a thread and offering a filter based on that. In addition to the obvious version choices, it could also have "Pertains to all versions" and "Not version-specific".
That would significantly reduce the level of frustrations I think many visitors experience when searching the forums.
Google Search
Drupal.org can also use Google Search api to build a search system in own website. Modules are available - https://drupal.org/project/google_cse. Don't know it will be versatile like current search or not.
Regards,
Sandip Choudhury
www.UltraCorporatePixel.com
http://hostingultraso.com