

SearchYC Performance Enhancements - chengmi
http://blog.searchyc.com/#searchyc-performance

======
vaksel
How come pg links to webmynd and not searchyc?

Searchyc is a lot more useful, and you don't need to install anything to use
it.

~~~
unalone
Isn't webmynd YC? I dunno why, but the guy seems to have a bias towards
YCombinator-funded companies.

~~~
vaksel
I think so, although nowhere on their website do they say this

~~~
unalone
<http://ycombinator.com/faq.html>

It's in the cloud of names.

~~~
vaksel
I meant on webmynd's website

~~~
unalone
Is there a reason for them to display their funders?

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Credibility.

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fallentimes
I've found SearchYC to be very helpful. I use it quite a bit to look up old
information I only vaguely remember or to find people. Glad to see it's only
going to get better - congrats Mike and Jerry.

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e1ven
I always love hearing about behind the scenes updates, thanks for posting.

As a more dev-heavy optimization, it might be possible to return cached
results (user-search:PG), and then trigger a backend server to refresh the
cache, possibly even using ajax to inject the new results.

Thanks for the site, it's my top choice for searching HN.

As an aside, I'd love to see a standard for integrating site-specific search
into a larger search engine. Imagine if you could go to Google, and type in

"Site:News.ycombinator.com user:e1ven" and it would send those as post-
requests to the search engine designated by robots.txt on the host?

That would make search dramatically "deeper", by letting google act as a
front-end to each site's results.

-CPD

~~~
sam_in_nyc
There's the "OpenSearch" protocol, which just tells your browser "to search
this site go to [someurl]?search={SearchTerms}" SearchYC could certainly add
this, though I think it may be limited to 1 search only, and not something
like: "I have two types of searches, one for everything, and and another for
users."

But beyond that, OpenSearch it's pretty limited. I expect this area of semi-
semantic searching to explode, which is why I'm investing my own time into it.

So, hang tight for a couple of weeks, then the problem will be solved :)

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johnrob
Here is a feature request that is relevant only because you are already
archiving hackernews:

Send a notification to my email __________ whenever:

(checkbox) Someone replies to a comment from user _________

(checkbox) User _________ makes a submission/comment

(submit button)

~~~
chengmi
Notifications was one of the original motivations for creating SearchYC, but
there are a couple of fundamental flaws:

1) How would we know if you've already read a comment/submission? It would get
spammy really quick unless we did some kind of periodic digest. We decided
that creating RSS feeds for search terms (e.g. username) is a happy medium for
this, but we're open to suggestions.

2) New items can take quite a bit of time to get indexed (usually 0-2 hours
depending on the number of new items and position in the queue).

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sam_in_nyc
I like SearchYC a lot, but when it's slow I tend to use Google site search:

[http://www.google.com/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com+sea...](http://www.google.com/search?q=site:news.ycombinator.com+search+term)

~~~
tokenadult
Google gives more comprehensive results too. But there is a time lag with
either. I was mining my bookmarks tonight to find links worth posting, and
searched to see if one had been posted before. Search YC indicated it had not
been, so I posted it, only to discover to my chagrin that someone else had
just submitted it just before I did. (My submission is now deleted, to avoid
duplication.) I try to search before I submit, so accurate and timely search
is helpful.

~~~
sam_in_nyc
I haven't done a lot of submitting myself.. I usually just do "Ask HN" type
stuff. Hacker News doesn't automatically tell you that the URL you're
submitting has already been submitted? Or was the URL slightly different?

~~~
tokenadult
HN automatically upvotes the previous post if you submit an EXACT duplicate
URL. But some webpages live under more than one URL, and not everyone submits
the canonical URL.

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jacquesm
searchyc seems to be down for me, is this related to the improvements or is it
just that I can't reach it and everybody else can ?

edit.

thanks to the people that tested it, ok so that seems to be my problem then,
here is a traceroute of the last steps before it stops responding:

11 * pos-1-4-0-0-cr01.mclean.va.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.86.29) 251.887 ms
252.502 ms

12 pos-1-11-0-0-cr01.atlanta.ga.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.85.241) 267.698 ms
268.398 ms 234.520 ms

13 pos-1-13-0-0-cr01.dallas.tx.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.85.253) 227.691 ms *
153.851 ms

14 pos-0-13-0-0-cr01.losangeles.ca.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.85.145) 202.909 ms
204.094 ms 204.818 ms

15 * pos-0-14-0-0-cr01.sacramento.ca.ibone.comcast.net (68.86.85.189) 215.876
ms 216.499 ms

16 pos-0-15-0-0-ar01.oakland.ca.sfba.comcast.net (68.86.90.138) 219.741 ms
220.384 ms *

17 po-30-ur02.santaclara.ca.sfba.comcast.net (68.87.226.222) 222.161 ms
223.248 ms 222.742 ms

18 te-8-4-ur04.santaclara.ca.sfba.comcast.net (68.87.226.85) 224.225 ms
224.801 ms 225.416 ms

~~~
weaksauce
<http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/searchyc.com>

up for me.

~~~
jacquesm
nice link by the way, thanks !

------
skmurphy
Thanks for developing and maintaining this, I use it several times a week to
get context on news.yc posts and comments.

