Hello everyone,
and welcome back Update August the cute little summer series about the small and not so small updates and upgrades I have for YourDailyGerman.
Last time, I told you about the new audio example generation features in my dictionary (check out the article here)
And today, I’m really happy to introduce to you
My New Site Search
Until now, I used the search I built for my dictionary, and it kind of doubled up as a glossary. It was very much centered around words and vocabulary though and you could not for instance search for a specific article title or for a random phrase.
But that changes now!
I have a completely new system and I’m pretty sure it’ll let you find the things you want to learn more about much more reliably.
Here’s how it looks:
The key difference is that the new search actually searches in the lessons directly, while the old one only went through the dictionary/glossary. And whatever I hadn’t added there specifically, wouldn’t be found.
Like… Many of you would search for a specific post title for instance or a phrase like “position verb” and find nothing or nothing meaningful.
But now you’ll actually find the relevant lessons most of the time.
As you can see in the screenshot, the results are marked as “lesson” or “dictionary”, and you have to option to filter and just look for lesson/articles or just dictionary entries.
Now, the one drawback of the new system is that it doesn’t handle typos well yet. So if you look for “gebnn”, you’ll get “no results”. I’m going to try and make that work though and add some “did you mean” suggestions like the old system had.
Anyway, I’ll hook the new search to the general site in the coming days, but for now, if you want to try it out, you can do that here. Just enter a trial search and it’ll take you to the new search and result page (opens in new tab now).
I’m really curious what you think and if it’s more effective at helping you find what you want.
Oh, and if you did like the old search and used it like a dictionary… don’t worry. That’ll not go away entirely. I’ll add a dedicated dictionary page where you can access it or find some other way.
But yeah, let me know what you think (good and bad) about the new search, either here or over on the result page. I’ll definitely tweak this in the coming weeks and months too, so if you have any ideas, please let me know as well.
I really hope you like it and find it useful.
Have a great week and I’ll see you next time.
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I’m someone who read the blog posts on this site and otherwise used it for quite some time before I discovered the dictionary–which makes it twice as valuable. I assumed the old Search box did what Search boxes normally do, not that it would lead me to a lexicographical treasure trove. So please use this opportunity to make the portal to the dictionary clearer to newcomers to the site.
Thanks for continuing to look for ways to improve the site. I followed Jeffrey’s tip and tried the new search on “word order” (without the quotation marks) and was pleased by list of articles that came up.
However, one thing was puzzling: The seventh item listed just said Wortstellung, and the box on the right indicated it was a dictionary item. Clicking on the link got me to “Apologies, but the page you requested could not be found. Perhaps searching will help.”
Using the new search on Wortstellung also turned up nothing, either in articles or the dictionary.
Oh, thanks for this, there actually was a bug with the links. It’s fixed now :).
Happy to hear you now discovered the dictionary. I’m making that into an app and will also have it more clear here on the site once I worked out all the kinks with the new search.
I love this new way to search for previous articles. I also really appreciate how you are constantly updating and improving yourdailygerman, it is the best online resource I’ve found.
Thanks a lot, I’m happy to hear that and I’ll definitely keep on improving the site!
I suspect I know the answer to this, but the search is only for german words, correct? I pretended I’d forgotten “es geht um”, and wanted to find the phrase or article for “it is about something”. It pulled up a huge list of articles with the word “something” in it. It really looks like a great tool, though, and you must have put a ton of work into it. Thanks so much.
Yeah, the new search focuses on titles and the description and weighs them super high, while the content (which has a lot of English) is weighed less.
The dictionary does work both ways (though not perfectly) and will continue to do so.
This is definitely an improvement. I can’t begin to say how many times I’ve read one of your articles and had one of your explanations stick, but regretted not making a note of it. For example, I give this improvement “two thumbs up”. Then, I remembered reading one of your articles that described the German word for a ‘thumbs up’ .. what was that word? so I searched ‘thumbs up’ .. poof! das Lob. Yeah, I can get used to this quite easily. Thanks
Hallo,
Just one lil’ typo:
“welcome back Update August” (welcome back to Update August)
Thanks, very useful, I did a search on “prefix verbs” (still the bane of my German-learning existence) and it returned 25 pages of material, so now I actually have a list of everything you’ve ever written about it :))
Bis bald!
My workaround was to go to Google and search: word order yourdailygerman.com. That set of articles is really excellent and I recommend it often.
I know there is some special syntax for Google searches to just search a particular site, but I never bother.
I’m curious, did it actually ever hit you with one of the AI snippets when you added my page directly?
I just checked und it put your page at the top and then a long AI summary under that. The summary vaguely resembles your explanation but it is actually pretty vague and doesn’t give enough information to use it.
Thanks a lot for checking!! Much appreciated.
And good to hear that they at least have the common sense to show the page directly for a branded search like that. The summaries always have a chance of including “non-article” information, which is one reason why I haven’t added a “chat about the article” feature yet. The model can get the article as context, but it’s also the model which has thousands of articles baked in, and there’s always a chance that it outputs something from those instead of strictly sticking with the article at hand. My experience anways :)
Hi Emanuel! Thanks for all the work you put into the site! I just entered ‘leben’ in the trial search box, and I kind of get the gist of the new setup- I think I will just need to get used to it and use it more before I can give any feedback?? But one question- when I entered ‘leben,’ I got 37 results- does the search give you every article where ‘leben’ is mentioned/used? B/c not all of those may be relevant to what the person searching the term wants/needs, and it may seem a little overwhelming.
Yeah, it searches through the content so it might find rather unrelated entries and display them. I could exclude the content but that would then carry the risk that some searches would be less successful. I get your point about it being overwhelming and FOMO-inducing.
There’s a “snippet” function that I haven’t tried yet where it would show you what exactly from a post it matched by highlighting it. Maybe that’s an option.
Yes, that kind of ‘snippet’ function might be a nice way to filter through the results without reducing the success of the search!
I’m really not sure about his Emanuel.
Intial impression is this seems to have broken using the dictionary to browse prefix verbs.
For instance if I search for setzen I get none of the prefix verbs – just setzen.
Also am i going to tick the dictionary box every time i want to look up a word?
So the new search is not meant to replace the dictionary search. The dictionary search will still be available and work just the same, but finding articles was definitely a weak point and I had to do something about it.
I’m not sure yet as to where to put the dictionary search (besides the app of course, which will be in Beta soon).
I am also happy to make an exception for you and have the dictionary search be the default for your account, since you really do use it and contribute quite a bit by asking questions, which slowly enriches it over time.
So yeah… don’t worry, it’s not going away. The new search is extra.
Could you make the dictionary search the default for me too?
Maybe if there’s a prominent link to the dictionary on the home page, and clicking that takes you to the dictionary search?
I don’t know if “prominent link” is the right word. Just if the dictionary was a tad more visible. Like in the mobile menu, it’s not that far down, but the font is a little hard to read, so I tend to stop after a couple lines.
The new search function seems like a great idea. I did notice it doesn’t seem to find as many dictionary results as the current search. For “machen”, it was 27 of 58, and I couldn’t get to the second page of the results. For “setzen”, it was 1 instead of 48.
I can definitely make it the default for you too.
Could you actually send me a screenshot of the mobile menu how it looks on your phone? Based on your description I feel like it might not look as it should.
As for the results… I don’t know how exactly the new search finds things because I didn’t write the search algorithm. The old one is completely custom so I know how it works fully. Now that I say that, I never actually tried to modify it to include lessons and search there as well, but what it cannot do is find partial phrases beyond 4 letters difference. The new search if more powerful in that regard but for the dictionary itself, the old one is better because they were made together.
The main thought though is that prefix verbs (and, i think the, the nominalised form) don’t come up any more. One of the great things about the dictionary has been how it emphasises the prefix verb, and this feels lost, or at least made a lot less accesible.
In the old search you’d have all these prefix versions and it made for super interesting browsing /scrolling and a rich experience of the language.
https://yourdailygerman.com/dictionary/?dictionary=1&s=setzen
I get there is a “efficiency” to just seeing “setzen” but i think a lot seems lost with the new version
Btw
regarding the algorhythm for search – just noticed if you search for geben you get 2 suggestions before you get geben itself. Not in itself bad but the most important word comes third. Then you have “impreritive” in the mix for some reason.
edit: btw i get its good that the search function for articles improved, but is it possible to have that AND a version of the algorhythm for the dcitionary that includes prefix verbs?
Like, also if i use the old dictionary i get to see the perfect and preterite form immediately
I also get to see useful information like:
(The least common of the “trifecta” of placing (setzen, stellen, legen). For “setzen” there is an element of “being carried”, but it’s really abstract. By itself, it’s for instance used for putting money on a bet. It is NOT used in the sense of “settings”.)
AND
(“sich+Acc setzen” – ONLY for the act of sitting down. The sitting itself is called “sitzen”.)
This is all missing from the new version.
I can add some of this information to the new cards but the idea of the new search is really that it’s the proper site search that people kind of expect while the old dictionary search is for the dictionary.
In the beginning, I was just using the default wordpress search but that was so awful that I decided to build my own glossary which then evolved into the dictionary. But from tracking unsuccessful searches I know that many people look for grammar topics and can’t find anything because the dictionary is not flexible enough. This search is one of the first touch points for many people who are new to the site so it’s important that it works well and helps find lessons. People usually don’t expect a dictionary and it kind of blurs what new people think this site is.
I do not plan to retire the old search, don’t worry :). I just want to give both portions (articles and dictionary) the space and treatment they need.
Yeah, I noticed that too, it’s odd but I cannot figure out why because I didn’t write the algorithm in this case.
It’s supposed to rank by relevance, but it is not always perfect, that’s for sure.
“but is it possible to have that AND a version of the algorhythm for the dcitionary that includes prefix verbs?”
Yes, absolutely!
This is what it looks like for me on Android. It could be because working long hours is messing with my eyes, but the font seems a hair small and the contrast is maybe a tad low.
I saw a comment here about the dictionary not being something that people expect. It’s not something I expected either, but sometimes those are some of the best things. It’s kind of like having a native speaker sit there and explain the words to you. It’s given me answers to things I really couldn’t find anywhere else.
Die neue Funktion ist super. Viel besser als nur im Wörterbuch nachzuschauen. Gute Arbeit.