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Thanks for the update! Gave it a spin and I love it~ I love that typo tolerance too! It does help when you can only partially remember the name of something you're looking for.

Quick question: Will the search function have a pagination system, such as a "Next Page" at the bottom of the page for searches with a large amount of results?


I did notice a cutoff after a certain amount is displayed, and there's no Next Page link to click on, meaning I can't browse further than the initial page of results. It's not affected by auto-loading as a setting either. I checked and searching by tags has a pagination system, while searching by keyword (using the search bar) doesn't.

If not, it's fine too. Thanks again! 🙏

(1 edit)
It does help when you can only partially remember the name

That feature existed before. It was improved. But it still is title matching. It now matches url and creator display names too. Short description was matched before, but as far as I observed, if it could fill the results with title matches, those usually had more relevance.

The number of results seems capped more than before. It was something like x = exact title matches + 60 or less. It seems now to be x = 60 or less with exact title matches no longer leading the results, nor being mandatory included.

Also, the relevance ordering seems kinda strange.

If you type neighbor, it will show you the game "That's not my Neighbor" in suggestions starting with "ne" already. But the search

https://itch.io/search?q=neighbor 

does not even have that game in the results (currently). And "neighbor" is the only real noun in that title.

The game will show up for "that's", and even for "that". But it currently does not show up for "thats". So much for the typo correction. It does show up for "thats not my", but since the game also does show up for "not my", that does not tell us anything.

--

The query results have changed since. The game shows now with "ne" or more, as a search term. It will also show up for "thats". 

That the search will match 60 results to "ne" is curious. While this is not a good term to search with, one would expect to match a lot more than 60 titles. But those everyday short words are not good titles. Like fps for example. Those are better used as tags, not as title fragments. You do not search with "fps" to find "banana fps".

In my opinion it depends all on what the search is supposed to do and to make it understood to the people using that feature - without need to consult a message board. I have different expectations from a box called "Title Search" in contrast to "Tag Search", "Keyword Search" or just "Search". Or expectations about a box that does not even tell it is a free write in box and disguises as a drop down list.

Admin(+1)

We probably won’t be adding pagination. Can you give me an example of a query you made where you felt like you wanted to go through multiple pages to find something?

Hi leafo, thanks for letting me know!

Sure, here's the query in question: https://itch.io/search?q=victorian

Admin(+1)

I suppose I was interested more about your use case, not just the query used. Are you looking with something with “Victorian” in the name, or you want to find stuff with that topic?

I was more or less looking for the latter - Victorian-related stuff, which may or may not be in the name or description. For example Victorian-inspired games, assets, comics, etc.

Admin(+2)

I think this is a perfect example of a use case for a tag. I’ve gone ahead and added a new “suggested tag” so that developers can start tagging their work as “Victorian”. The results page will now suggest you browse that tag as well.

Since itch has free tagging, 70+ games already did have that tag.

For single word searches you might want to consider to insert some short blurb anyways, even especially if there are no suggested tags as a result. It could read similar to "Missing something? Maybe try freestyle tag filtering instead (show tag filter box here)". There are many tags that are used and have many items, but are not in the suggested list.

And that tags are freestyle is not really advertised prominently. I remember a heated discussion where I even was called a liar, for claiming that tags are freely choosable and was quoted the then 14 pages of "all" tags.

Thank you so much for the update! I've tried it out and it's great! I hope the developers will start tagging them so they'll be easier to find in the future. Bless~

I'm having a similar problem with the new search update--previously I could search "Monsterhearts" and find a number of fan-made products regarding the game, but I've similarly noticed a cutoff to the search results that prevents me from locating any further supplemental material for the game on this site. I'm a bit disappointed pagination won't be added to the search results, as I've found that the previous search system worked well for my intended use of it. This one, not so much...

as I've found that the previous search system worked well for my intended use of it

There was a cutoff before. I do not understand how this could have worked for you before.

Maybe try switching to physical games, as some of those are released there and some in "other" and some in (computer) games. And if there is no common tag used by these projects, a internet search with site:itch.io topic-of-interest will be better. Itch's search is still optimised for title search. So the projects would have to include your topic in title.

Admin

I think the tag page might me a suitable solution for you: https://itch.io/physical-games/tag-monsterhearts