Autotrader has a feedback form
Autotrader has a feedback form
Author
Discussion

shadowninja

Original Poster:

80,084 posts

312 months

Saturday 25th October 2008
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I know it's not big and it's not clever, but I just posted this in their web feedback form...

"Jesus fking Christ. Fix your fking search engine. I want to kill pandas now."

thumbup

shadowninja

Original Poster:

80,084 posts

312 months

Saturday 25th October 2008
quotequote all
PS where can I search for used cars in their thousands?

lionrampant

577 posts

220 months

Saturday 25th October 2008
quotequote all
eBay.

shadowninja

Original Poster:

80,084 posts

312 months

Saturday 25th October 2008
quotequote all
Prefer to part ex so has to be trade.

zac510

5,546 posts

236 months

Saturday 25th October 2008
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What's so bad about it?

miniman

30,085 posts

292 months

Saturday 25th October 2008
quotequote all
You wouldn't believe what they paid for it. Serious money for "enterprise search and guided navigation". According to the guy that implemented it, they totally missed the point and insisted that the old style search be replicated precisely. He maintains that if they had used the technology properly, it would work much better.

Of course, during a demonstration by the technology company to us, they showed just how great it is by searching for "small" and "camera". Lots of small, camera-related stuff, like memory cards, but no small cameras. Genius.

shadowninja

Original Poster:

80,084 posts

312 months

Saturday 25th October 2008
quotequote all
zac510 said:
What's so bad about it?
I take it you haven't used it recently on a regular basis?

zac510

5,546 posts

236 months

Saturday 25th October 2008
quotequote all
I used it a bit a few months ago when looking for a car. I wouldn't have thought many people would use the keyword search on Autotrader. Searching with just the dropdowns works OK except when the data isn't clean.

I just looked up what search indexing they are using. Miniman from my very small experience, keyword searches like that need to be 'tuned' in the system, if your users are likely to search with adjectives like that, ie you might map small to compact so compact cameras are returned.

Edited by zac510 on Saturday 25th October 17:12

miniman

30,085 posts

292 months

Saturday 25th October 2008
quotequote all
zac510 said:
I just looked up what search indexing they are using. Miniman from my very small experience, keyword searches like that need to be 'tuned' in the system, if your users are likely to search with adjectives like that, ie you might map small to compact so compact cameras are returned.
Absolutely, the rules need to be carefully set up and the search technology is only as good as the data it is given to work with and the tuning that is done. It just amused me that a technology company would demonstrate an electronic goods site and search for "small camera" without first checking that it would return some small cameras.

Ironically Solr (http://lucene.apache.org/solr/) will do very similar things to the kit that is behind Autotrader, but it's free smile