Saying goodbye to Octopart-powered HNSearch

[andres]

HN’s search functionality is now powered by Algolia (YC W14) instead of Octopart (YC W07).

While it’s sad to say goodbye to something we built with love, I for one welcome a new player with the energy and motivation to build a search engine that does HN justice.

When we launched HNSearch it was because we wanted to show the world what we could do with our search infrastructure. We had built a powerful search database (ThriftDB) and we were eager to see how far we could take it. Unfortunately, we never had the time to focus on improving HNSearch or on getting users for ThriftDB so it’s time to sunset those products.[1]

In terms of Octopart on the other hand, the future has never looked brighter. We followed our own path and and now we’ve assembled an outstanding team that’s passionate about opening up access to part data for a new generation of hardware hackers.[2] Our proprietary search infrastructure is still one of the best we’ve seen and we have some ambitious plans for how to make it even better.

HN, thanks for the memories. We are very proud to have powered search for such an incredible community.

Andres

[1] We’ll continue to support hnsearch.com until March 15 to give developers time to migrate their apps to Algolia’s API (https://hn.algolia.io/api).

[2] Octopart is hiring. Come join us!!!! (http://octopart.com/jobs)

[uladzislau]

Does anyone else agree that the site thumbnails in the new search just distract from the search results without adding any value?

[redox_ → uladzislau]

What do you think about http://hn.algolia.com/legacy ?

[cinquemb → redox_]

Thanks for this. But I would like to add that it seems like I cannot[0] do an exact phrase search like I could do with HN search[1]. It seems to search for a body of text that contains all the words rather than the exact phrase, unless there is some special syntax I am not familiar with to do the same.

[0]: http://hn.algolia.com/legacy#!/comment/sort_by_date/0/%22Sta...

[1]: https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/comments&q=%22Stand+...

[sdesol → redox_]

This is certainly a step in the right direction. I too find the thumbnails to be an EXTREMELY distracting. And in my opinion, offer absolutely no value. If this was an image search, then a thumbnail would be useful. But seeing unreadable text doesn't help me decide if this is what I'm looking for.

Here are my thoughts.

- Only show me 10 matches at a time.

- Increase the font size for the points, date and comments line.

- Use yellow background highlighting to show search term matches.

[Crito → redox_]

This is much better, thank you for it.

[yebyen → uladzislau]

I do not agree, from a small sample, I noticed that they got a screenshot even for my own site, which is currently down.

Also could be helpful in the case where I'm searching for an article on a topic where I barely remember or only just clicked through to the article, but found some comment interesting, and I'm looking for it again days or weeks later.

(Eg. When the post's HN title has been changed by mods, and all I might have left to go on is that I still vaguely remember what the style of the article page looked like)

[bonemachine → uladzislau]

Agreed -- thumbnails are next to useless, distracting to look at + "thin out" the result set (by forcing vertical spacing), and presumably slow things down quite considerably, all around.

Please restore to something reflecting the aesthetics of the HN front page -- and the essence of beauty and simplicity it embodies.

[pcvarmint → uladzislau]

Yes.

[klapinat0r]

> Unfortunately, we never had the time to [...] getting users for ThriftDB

Which is surprising to me as I've waited for years to try it, but it always stated it was unavailable.

I would've loved to try it.

[flocial]

Is there any reason why you can't hand over hnsearch.com?

[avalaunch]

Will sort by points functionality be added? Please... pretty please.

[staunch]

The mass of knowledge stored in the HN archives is considerable and HNSearch has been a great way to mine it. Thank you!

[macrotim]

Is there a way to sort by points? I see only a radio button to "Sort by date."

[frik]

Thank you for providing the search.

Sorry, but the search results and the stylesheet are way better for me with the old hnsearch.com

I will use a Google search like this: "site:news.ycombinator.com FooBar"

[wib]

I use the !hn bang syntax on DuckDuckGo daily… Here's hoping it stays available.

[ereckers]

I was wondering about the technology you used to fetch the site thumbnails?

[redox_ → ereckers]

We use wkhtmltoimage, more details available here: http://blog.algolia.com/hacker-news-search-algolia

[ereckers → redox_]

Just getting back around to this. Wanted to say thanks for the writeup.

[DanBC]

I very much liked your HN search. I could find things.

[GrahamsNumber]

I'm sorry to say, but at least right now the new search is absolutely dreadful. Try searching for "Go".

[redox_ → GrahamsNumber]

We've just deployed an improvement disabling prefixed search when the query comes from the news.ycombinator.com or after form submitting (press enter). What do you think?

[GrahamsNumber → redox_]

Better, but you need to stop ranking by points and switch to a relevance metric. There are two main issues right now: A lost of the posts are really old, and the results are plain bad. Here's some results I get when I search for "Go" again:

1. Reddit to go dark on Jan 18 to protest SOPA 2. Go Daddy No Longer Supports SOPA 3. Why we can't go back to business as usual post-PRISM 4. Right click and save as needs to go away

and so on. You could for example, instead of just maching a single keyword, look at the post contents and comments, and see if that keyword appears multiple times. A discussion about Golang is bound to have more entries of "Go" than "Go Daddy no longer supports SOPA".