Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Site Search!
After years in the making (or more accurately, years in the wanting), I finally figured out how I wanted to do search for KDO posts. I’ve been tinkering with this specific implementation since the beginning of the summer and it finally all came together. If you’re a member, please help me to kick the tires on this for a few days. (That link, as well as the search links below, will 404 for non-members for now.)
Hopefully it’s pretty close and then I can open it up to everyone. I’ve been using it for the past week or two and it’s been really helpful so far, especially in surfacing older posts about topics I’m currently writing about or generally interested in. The tag pages are good for that too, but search can help hone in on specifics — like posts I’ve made about fascism or posts that link to McSweeney’s. Search also pulls in results from Quick Links, which aren’t included on tag pages. The rankings still need some work here and there (it’s not magic), but your searches will help calibrate things.
For now, the search only looks at posts from 2014 to the present. You can search by keyword, describe what you remember (“the guy who walks in Japan”), or paste a link to find posts that link to it. Search is fuzzy-ish but it’s not an AI bot or anything like that so if you ramble on with a 25-word query, it’s probably not going to work that well. You can sort by best match or newest, search all posts or just Quick Links or main posts, and filter by time (past month, past 3 months, etc.)
I’ll share more about how search works in a subsequent post. For now, kick the tires and let me know what you think in the comments or via email. As always, bug reports, comments, and suggestions are welcome.
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This is awesome!! Ok but there is an old post that *haunts* me (in a good way) - about how to make big life decisions and choosing the option that makes your life bigger. I think about it ALL THE TIME and have shared it as advice to many people--but I have never been able to find it again!! And could not surface it in this new search. Always possible I made it up - but here are some things that could tweak about search to help me find ie:
Fully recognize both of these things might be hard to fix, but raising them in support of my quest!
Is it this?
https://kottke.org/20/09/oliver-burkemans-eight-secrets-to-a-fairly-fulfilled-life
I’ll admit to having used google to narrow down the options…
WOW THIS IS IT!!! you are a hero
Search is legit!! Nice one, Jason (again). Especially in this year of KDO awesomeness. We're a very well-cared for membership group!
BTW: I know you were going for the old-school TV "... Batman!" with the post headline, but I keep hearing "... Danny Rojas!!" Is it just me?! =)
Love the site search, worked great for me!
I'd like to second Silvie S 's comment that a future improvement for sorting through many results could include truncating each result to something like the headline and first 2-5 rows of text or something. That risks losing a connection, like if the term hits on something in the linked text, so I don't know the right approach.
Kudos on this Jason Kottke ! Really nice, and I love coming *HERE* to look for what I want instead of going to a 3rd party search tool.
Addendum: I just tried to search all of the following and was surprised to get zero results, FYI: "na na na na", "na na", "Na, Na".
I hope there is going to be a "how I built the search" post :D
"I’ll share more about how search works in a subsequent post" maybe I should read the whole thing...
Woohoo! I love this. Second Silvie's "post title text only" response in place of all post text/images for easier scanning.
There is a 2019 post i have returned to before on "how to write a sympathy note" from this post but neither "sympathy note" or 'how to write a sympathy note" pulled it up yet "sympathy-note" did? (albeit buried among a lot of other posts).
You are brave for taking this on. Thank you!
Well, it's good... could be great... I searched for "games" and got only things matching that specific word... but not the same results I got for "game". I KNOW there are WAY more game/s related posts than the search finds. Also, what order are the results appearing in? Not, apparently, chronologically (according to the dates visible on the posts) - so I still feel like I need to scroll through all the results to be sure I didn't miss what I was looking for. Good first effort.
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