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FA tips and tricks: the search
3 years ago
Hello everyone,
If you’re reading this, you probably know me already, but for those that don’t. I’m Ajax B. Coriander.
I’ve been using FA and writing on it for over the last 10+ years. In that time, I’ve learned a lot on how the search works.
I’m not someone who has seen the sausage is made, so all of these are just observations, I’m unaware of the exact coding behind each one.
That being said, I’ve been able to figure out a few things.
First off there are two main ways to search.
Using the @ keyword (no space) function, which will only search in the keywords a user has assigned.
Just entering the text straight into the textbox, which will pull from the submission, keywords, text, comments, the filename, and maybe some other places I’m not aware of.
The 1st example is what happens when you click on a keyword within the keyword box, you’re taken to the search, and that function is put into place. This ensures the only results you see are exactly the ones that have been tagged with that keyword.
The 2nd works because of the way the search was introduced. It’s not something that was designed into the site from the start, it was something that was added much, much, much later.
They needed a way to grandfather in all the submissions that existed prior to the keyword field being introduced. Without doing so, there’s 10s of thousands, if not 100s of thousands, of submissions that would have had no way of being searched out. So this feature is there so everyone has a chance to be seen — even if their content is old, they’re unable to update any longer, or they just didn’t think to use a particular keyword.
Which brings me to how the search results are sorted:
Date, Popularity, and Relevancy.
Date:
This one is pretty self explanatory. It looks for your search, and displays everything in order of its creation.
Popularity:
How “popular” something is. From what I can tell, this is weighted against views, comments, and favs. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but this can even sometimes bring in a result that caused something controversial and had a lot of discussion in the comments. But basically, the more interaction the post has, the higher it gets ranked.
Relevancy:
The system does its best to find something that’s the most relevant to your search. I’m not exactly sure how this works when using @ keywords (no space), but when not using it, it seems to take a look at the comments, text, keywords, and submission to figure out how relevant it is to your search. Like if you search “bear”. It will find the bear submissions, see how often it’s mentioned, and then display out the thing that seems the most relevant.
After you do a search, you can also select the “advanced search” and find a few more things. Like:
Phrase searching: "hello world"
NOT: hello -world -or- hello !world
But those are going to be used for when you want to find something super specific.
Something like:
“Bandit” & “chilli” & !"stripe"
You could even create your own custom URL you could set as your homepage that sets up all of your relevant interests.
Example:
Example
https://www. Furaffinity. net/search/?q=something&page=1&perpage=48&order-by=date&order-direction=desc&range=all&rating-general=on&rating-mature=&rating-adult=&type-art=on&type-flash=on&type-photo=on&type-music=on&type-story=on&type-poetry=on&mode=extended
Big shout out to quoting_mungo for the feedback, and DUVMik for showing me the search link example.
Forum post where I had people check my work
Please let me know if anyone has any questions!
If you’re reading this, you probably know me already, but for those that don’t. I’m Ajax B. Coriander.
I’ve been using FA and writing on it for over the last 10+ years. In that time, I’ve learned a lot on how the search works.
I’m not someone who has seen the sausage is made, so all of these are just observations, I’m unaware of the exact coding behind each one.
That being said, I’ve been able to figure out a few things.
First off there are two main ways to search.
Using the @ keyword (no space) function, which will only search in the keywords a user has assigned.
Just entering the text straight into the textbox, which will pull from the submission, keywords, text, comments, the filename, and maybe some other places I’m not aware of.
The 1st example is what happens when you click on a keyword within the keyword box, you’re taken to the search, and that function is put into place. This ensures the only results you see are exactly the ones that have been tagged with that keyword.
The 2nd works because of the way the search was introduced. It’s not something that was designed into the site from the start, it was something that was added much, much, much later.
They needed a way to grandfather in all the submissions that existed prior to the keyword field being introduced. Without doing so, there’s 10s of thousands, if not 100s of thousands, of submissions that would have had no way of being searched out. So this feature is there so everyone has a chance to be seen — even if their content is old, they’re unable to update any longer, or they just didn’t think to use a particular keyword.
Which brings me to how the search results are sorted:
Date, Popularity, and Relevancy.
Date:
This one is pretty self explanatory. It looks for your search, and displays everything in order of its creation.
Popularity:
How “popular” something is. From what I can tell, this is weighted against views, comments, and favs. I’m not sure exactly how it works, but this can even sometimes bring in a result that caused something controversial and had a lot of discussion in the comments. But basically, the more interaction the post has, the higher it gets ranked.
Relevancy:
The system does its best to find something that’s the most relevant to your search. I’m not exactly sure how this works when using @ keywords (no space), but when not using it, it seems to take a look at the comments, text, keywords, and submission to figure out how relevant it is to your search. Like if you search “bear”. It will find the bear submissions, see how often it’s mentioned, and then display out the thing that seems the most relevant.
After you do a search, you can also select the “advanced search” and find a few more things. Like:
Phrase searching: "hello world"
NOT: hello -world -or- hello !world
But those are going to be used for when you want to find something super specific.
Something like:
“Bandit” & “chilli” & !"stripe"
You could even create your own custom URL you could set as your homepage that sets up all of your relevant interests.
Example:
Example
https://www. Furaffinity. net/search/?q=something&page=1&perpage=48&order-by=date&order-direction=desc&range=all&rating-general=on&rating-mature=&rating-adult=&type-art=on&type-flash=on&type-photo=on&type-music=on&type-story=on&type-poetry=on&mode=extended
Big shout out to quoting_mungo for the feedback, and DUVMik for showing me the search link example.
Forum post where I had people check my work
Please let me know if anyone has any questions!
It's just so damn helpful.
I'll use my username as an example, but mine is a special case, since the underscore doesn't work in the icon function. So it has to be removed.
(colon)iconsaintajax(colon) =
Vs
(colon)iconsaint_ajax(colon) =
Also, don't use the colons you would for the icon tag.
Just their username:
saintajax
Icon name:
saintajaxicon
Name icon:
iconsaintajax
By searching the above, you can find anyone mentioned by the original poster.
Like that ^
Either
Smutt -trade
or
keywords smutt -trade
If I were to search up... let's say from example blueberry, that has a link to a furaffinity account, if I were to throw that to the search bar, dosent refine the search to that specific user.
So for:
https://www.furaffinity.net/user/saintajax
You would just search
saintajax
But that may be hit or miss.
It basically comes down to resource reasons. FA didn't have a search for the first decade+ of life, and the only reason the search works now, is because content was grandfathered in. If they had included that ability, it would have been insane strain on the system. The resource requirements would have caused a lot of problems. So, only 3 plus characters work.
Do you have any example?
I would either try adding keywords to narrow the search or playing with the "Sort Criteria" feature. There's a manual option for date, so if you get to page 100 (if you are sorting by date), just note that last date range, and run a new search that starts with the last date you were able to access.
Or sort by descending and start with the first posts and move to the future instead of going from the future to the past.