Please fix the "search game"

[XpanderFX]

Problem of admins is they act as dictators. Their forum is their small reign. Changing something because it's users will it's like admitting his reign isn't so perfect. While leaving all as is means everything is like should be and no one can contradict it. Sad by true. My point of view is different: websites (no matter if forums, socials, or stores) are services and users are customers. If a website owner doesn't care about customers then customers will flee. I always used playstationtrophies.org, then they updated it. Tons of people complained about the new design, but nothing changed, so i switched to psnprofiles... Hope u got my point...

[YairGOW]

Could always use Google to search for games on psnprofiles. Much, much more exact.

Just search the game name followed by 'psnprofiles'. 

Edited March 4, 2021 by YairGOW

[Redgrave]

Yeah, it's pretty busted. A while back I tried searching for Shadow of War to look at the trophy list and I wound up getting a ton of other games with "Shadow" and "War" instead. Then I tried specifically searching for "Middle-earth: Shadow of War" only to get similar results except I also got the first game on the first page and if you want to get Shadow of War you have to go to the bottom on the second page to see it. It's ridiculous that even if you put in the exact title you want you still have to wade through a bunch of other games just because they have one similar word in them. I'm sure there are other times that I had a similar issue but I think that one was the most annoying one for me.

 

And as mentioned in the first page, searching for a game with Japanese text is virtually impossible .If you want to look up the PS3 remasters for the PS2 Yakuza games for example you have to put the Japanese text in, so you would have to put "龍が如く" in the search bar. Except even that doesn't work and doesn't even give you any results. What does give you the result though is only having "龍" for some reason. Before you used to just be able to put "Yakuza" in the search and would be able to find it that way.

 

Unfortunately the search feature is one of the many things that have been needed to be fixed for years. I'm sure eventually they will be though, right...? ?

Edited March 4, 2021 by Redgrave

[proud2bNs]

Suggested improvements:

 

1) Search for Word1 AND Word2 by default instead of Word1 OR Word2. Adding search terms should actually reduce the amount of results instead of increasing it.

2) Use full word lookup. Searching for "rain" should not give "train" as a result.

 

I totally understand that the search functionality on a relatively small website like this can't be implemented on a Google level. But implementing those two improvements could be done in like 1 hour and would make the search significantly better IMHO.

[Boooda]

This is psnprofiles, we don't do updates here 

[XpanderFX]

13 hours ago, YairGOW said:

Could always use Google to search for games on psnprofiles. Much, much more exact.

Just search the game name followed by 'psnprofiles'. 

 

what if gps dont shows exact location? i can use paper maps! jeez! seriously?? 

and what if i want to know how many versions exists of a specific game (EU, NA, JP etc)?? google it with your fantastic method??

11 hours ago, Helyx said:

 

 

Edited March 5, 2021 by Beyondthegrave07

[You]

I do find it annoying that you can't search using Japanese letters.

 

Literally no games exist if you do that.

[DaivRules]

15 minutes ago, XpanderFX said:

 

if i had a website/store/restaurant etc, i would be happy that my customers gives suggestions to me in order to improve it, because they know better what they want, than me. but in most of cases people goes away and never back without explanation. an advantage of forums is having real-time feedback and u should appreciate this instead of ignoring it and speaking like a spoiled child...

I don’t know if you are new around here or haven’t figured this out yet, but they’re not actually an admin around here.  
 

https://forum.psnprofiles.com/staff/

 

The search engine could certainly use some optimizing. Especially the suggestion to find whole matches in game titles first. 
 

The rest of the conversation seem a bit dramatic though. 

[JoesusHCrust]

11 hours ago, Helyx said:

 

 

P.S. The search function on the site isn't very good, and it would be great to see it improved. I quite regularly can't get any results, even when I type in the exact game name. 

Edited March 5, 2021 by Beyondthegrave07

[XpanderFX]

23 minutes ago, DaivRules said:

I don’t know if you are new around here or haven’t figured this out yet, but they’re not actually an admin around here.  
 

https://forum.psnprofiles.com/staff/

 

The search engine could certainly use some optimizing. Especially the suggestion to find whole matches in game titles first. 
 

The rest of the conversation seem a bit dramatic though. 

 

well no, i dont know this forum's staff. usually i dont make such researches because i dont look for friends to drink a beer with, on forums. today his "rank" was admin, then it changed to potato scientist. now i assume premium members can customize it and write everything they want

[Elegy]

This has been a minor issue I've had with the site for a long time.  There should be an option to do an "exact match" search.  Pretty much every modern text editor does this.  The PSNP search seems to be splitting your input text on a space delimiter and then doing a contains search with each word of your input query which can be useful.. but not when you want an exact match. 

 

Then there are games with special characters which are a nightmare.. good luck finding Deracine with the search function.  You have to know the foreign character code to be able to search for it or use a search pattern with every character that isn't a foreign character such as "racin".  Though I don't know if its easy to fix this depending on the back end coding, but there aren't a lot of examples of foreign characters being used in game titles at least.

Edited March 5, 2021 by Elegy

[BlindMango]

Search used to be perfect years ago before the site overhaul, you could even search most non-English games and they'd show up at the top too. I guess Sly decided to go with a different search system with the site redesign years back. I still have yet to fully understand why the site comes up with what it often does with the search results

 

7 hours ago, Gr4de_04 said:

I've always been anoyed by this search engine. I've never had a worse search engine of any of the sites I use. If Sly and Mango could look at it and give it some chances, i think that would be great.

 

I'm not able to dive into the code like that, only Sly is able to

[Quink666]

4 hours ago, YairGOW said:

Could always use Google to search for games on psnprofiles. Much, much more exact.

Just search the game name followed by 'psnprofiles'. 

 

That's exactly what i do most of the time.

[Darling Baphomet]

4 hours ago, YairGOW said:

Could always use Google to search for games on psnprofiles. Much, much more exact.

Just search the game name followed by 'psnprofiles'. 

 

Yep, this is what I do. The site's search is bullshit and not worth navigating, especially compared to the ease of just typing "dumpster simulator psnprofiles" into the URL bar and having it pop up instantly.

[Evil_Joker88]

I totally agree that the search engine needs an update. In addition to what's been mentioned so far there's something similar wrong:

 

I searched for "Resident Evil 5" and the PS4 version is entry nr. 6 on page 1 but why is the ps5 version entry nr. 1 on page 2??

 

Resident Evil 6 on the ither hand appears with both trophy lists back to back as entries nr. 3 and 4 on page 1. It deserves to be on the last page instead

[Otonio_Bruno]

6 hours ago, XpanderFX said:

Problem of admins is they act as dictators. Their forum is their small reign. Changing something because it's users will it's like admitting his reign isn't so perfect. While leaving all as is means everything is like should be and no one can contradict it. Sad by true. My point of view is different: websites (no matter if forums, socials, or stores) are services and users are customers. If a website owner doesn't care about customers then customers will flee. I always used playstationtrophies.org, then they updated it. Tons of people complained about the new design, but nothing changed, so i switched to psnprofiles... Hope u got my point...

 

The only administrator and owner of PSNP is Sly Ripper. And while there is a lot of voluntary and amazing community work done here in order to improve this website, many suggestions and solutions posted in this general feedback area can only be done by Sly Ripper himself. This is a business service indeed, the problem doesn't lie whether the owner wants to admit being wrong or not, it's more like, PSNP has no real competittors so there is no drive to improve the current service, coupled with the fact that Sly isn't really passionate about this website anymore. So...welcome to a stale website, don't expect anything new or an improvement for quite while.

Edited March 5, 2021 by Otonio_Bruno

[YairGOW]

6 hours ago, XpanderFX said:

 

what if gps dont shows exact location? i can use paper maps! jeez! seriously?? 

and what if i want to know how many versions exists of a specific game (EU, NA, JP etc)?? google it with your fantastic method??

Man, relax lol Yes, you could use paper maps, or you could stay lost and cry your GPS isn't working.

I was only suggesting a workaround until this is fixed, if ever. You are more than welcome to continue using the current search engine for the time being.

Never have I ever said that the algorithm doesn't require fixing. It could be improved by alot, and with not much work, tbh, but it doen't mean you can't use better methods in the meantime.

Also, to your final point, you could navigate to the list of any version of a game from the page of either one of the other versions.

Edited March 5, 2021 by YairGOW

[DrBloodmoney]

6 hours ago, XpanderFX said:

 

well no, i dont know this forum's staff. usually i dont make such researches because i dont look for friends to drink a beer with, on forums. today his "rank" was admin, then it changed to potato scientist. now i assume premium members can customize it and write everything they want

 

They can.

 

I'm not actually the 'official' PSNProfiles Morale Officer, it's just a self-appointed title.

I have no official remit.

 

On the other hand though - 

You're awesome, keep your chin up, I love you!

Edited March 5, 2021 by DrBloodmoney

[starcrunch061]

Strange as it sounds, I in fact am a "delicious snack cake". 

[XpanderFX]

11 hours ago, BlindMango said:

Search used to be perfect years ago before the site overhaul

 

yes, as i already told, the search engine needs to be downgraded in fact. I suggest others to dont use words as "update" or "improvement" as it can be a reason for Sly to answer (one day) things like "it's complicated, it requires a lot of work etc" when in fact it's something very simple to do that can be done in few minutes. I'm not a web developer but i did a course for a month and learned these things, in what can be considered a tutorial of web developing.

[HMS_Victor]

20 hours ago, Helyx said:

 

I didn't call you anything. You didn't state that you were using it in searches, only that "the" was also problematic.

 

Nonetheless, searching just "escapists" is clearly the better choice.

They actually said exactly that. They said games with the word, "the". They didn't say they were searching the word "the" on its own. They said they were searching game titles with that word in them. You understood it wrong, said they're an idiot for searching "the" and then tried to make it look like they made the mistake when it was you

 

Also, yeah I agree that it needs to be fixed. The other day I was looking for Tron Evolution so I searched Tron. The first result was Tron RUN/r then a page and a half of games with the letters "tron" somewhere in the title like Cybertron or Astronaut. It's only half way down the second page I found Tron Evolution

Edited March 5, 2021 by HMS_Victor

[thepeaguy83]

I'm going to assume that the proprietor of this service has been running it as a side project. He's most likely occupied with his actual career and his personal life.

I personally haven't had much of an issue using the site's search engine. If the administrator decides to make improvements, splendid. I'm not bothered either way.

[XpanderFX]

11 hours ago, thepeaguy83 said:

I'm going to assume that the proprietor of this service has been running it as a side project. He's most likely occupied with his actual career and his personal life.

I personally haven't had much of an issue using the site's search engine. If the administrator decides to make improvements, splendid. I'm not bothered either way.

 

it s not a reason to abandon it. i think that there are many people that would help with it for a small profit or even for free. collaboration between individauls its not an uncommon thing.

[SefyZero]

On 5/3/2021 at 0:38 AM, Redgrave said:

Yeah, it's pretty busted. A while back I tried searching for Shadow of War to look at the trophy list and I wound up getting a ton of other games with "Shadow" and "War" instead. Then I tried specifically searching for "Middle-earth: Shadow of War" only to get similar results except I also got the first game on the first page and if you want to get Shadow of War you have to go to the bottom on the second page to see it. It's ridiculous that even if you put in the exact title you want you still have to wade through a bunch of other games just because they have one similar word in them. I'm sure there are other times that I had a similar issue but I think that one was the most annoying one for me.

 

And as mentioned in the first page, searching for a game with Japanese text is virtually impossible .If you want to look up the PS3 remasters for the PS2 Yakuza games for example you have to put the Japanese text in, so you would have to put "龍が如く" in the search bar. Except even that doesn't work and doesn't even give you any results. What does give you the result though is only having "龍" for some reason. Before you used to just be able to put "Yakuza" in the search and would be able to find it that way.

 

Unfortunately the search feature is one of the many things that have been needed to be fixed for years. I'm sure eventually they will be though, right...? ?

For games like Middle-earth: Shadow of War I usually search for the least common word of the game name. In this case if you search "middle" it only gives 5 results, much easier to manage. Not the best method for common names, but oh well.

 

On 4/3/2021 at 8:17 PM, pinkrobot_pb said:

Search for:

The AND Escapists

And marvel at the exact match results.

 

Then abuse this by searching for:

Rime AND Rime

Epic search engine is epic.

 

Thanks a lot for the AND tip! I was already using it for games with common names or games with "The" in their name, but I never thought you can also use it in single-word games.

A user above stated that if he/she search for the PS4 game simply called "Fe" it appears on page 7 of 15. But if you instead search "Fe AND Fe" it only gives 1 result, the very game he/she was looking for!

Edited April 18, 2021 by SefyZero
spacing

[mbensasi]

I was just coming to post about this, glad to see there's already a thread. I wanted to find Path of Exile, searched "Path of Exile" and got 1,237 results. Searched just "Exile" and got only 5 results. Took another user's suggestion and searched "Path AND Exile" and got 1 result. It should not be this complicated to use a search engine on a simple database of games.