Kobobooks Search

[tkavan]

Like other forum members, I don't find the Kobobooks search function to be state-of-the-art. Here's this morning's treat: I searched for "Always on: The Conservative Party" (using the quotes). Up comes a list of the Japanese version of the Harry Potter books.

[paulsalter]

I get a message saying it cant be found

does the book exist as an ebook?

if i search without quotes I get Japanese books, which is correct

[tkavan]

Originally Posted by paulsalter

I get a message saying it cant be found

does the book exist as an ebook?

if i search without quotes I get Japanese books, which is correct

No it doesn't exist as an ebook or even as a printed book, though when I first made the search I thought it was a legitimate book title.

When I search with the quotes, which should mean search for this exact sequence of words and report Not Found if the phrase doesn't exist, I get the Japanese Potter books.

When I search without the quotes I get one book with the word "always" in the title, and then the Japanese Potters.

I was just wondering if someone on this forum knows how the Kobobooks search engine functions, and how to enter a search so it will return the results you are looking for.

BTW when you say "which is correct"... how is it correct that the search term I used returns Japanese titles? (Not trying to be argumentative, just trying to figure it it out!)

[paulsalter]

the search works in a similar way to google

as you say, searching with quotes should do an exact match and find nothing (as the book is not there)

searching without quotes will look for any of the words in the search string (so any title with "The" in it will be found (after testing this they have changed it somehow so it defaults to putting quotes around things)

I will have a look later see if i can work out what it now does

[rashkae]

Using the Kobo Book search recently felt like falling into the twilight zone. I was asked by a friend for help to buy "Love Unscripted" by Tina Reber. (Yes, it was for a friend.. why are you looking at me like that?)

So first, we searched for "Love Unscripted" (without the quotes, in Kobo search.)

Kobo replies: Displaying results for: “hearts in darkness”

WTF? Needless to say, the results didn't include anything like Love Unrestricted....

So then we searched for "Tina Reber", now Kobo replies:
Displaying results for: “kristen ashley”

I would love to know how it's even possible to so thoroughly confuse a simple search function.

[paulsalter]

something has changed recently on searches, it is very odd

I was looking yesterday for some free halloween books to read next month, easy search, just one word

results came back with books that have horror in the title (not what i wanted but i suppose related)

it did have underneath it a link for halloween which i did search for, clicked this and got no results found

gave up looking and went to amazon

[Woodstonian]

Originally Posted by paulsalter

something has changed recently on searches, it is very odd

I was looking yesterday for some free halloween books to read next month, easy search, just one word

results came back with books that have horror in the title (not what i wanted but i suppose related)

it did have underneath it a link for halloween which i did search for, clicked this and got no results found

gave up looking and went to amazon

I just repeated what you did. Strangely enough, I only got 10 results when I clicked on the "halloween" link (where it says "You searched for ...") and 7 were erotica. Only one had the word "Halloween" and that was in the "By" line. No books showed up with "Halloween" in the title. If I repeated the search placing Halloween in quotes, I got what I originally expected ... only books with Halloween in the title; 187 of them.

Strange search algorithms at work here!

[paulsalter]

Originally Posted by Woodstonian

I just repeated what you did. Strangely enough, I only got 10 results when I clicked on the "halloween" link (where it says "You searched for ...") and 7 were erotica. Only one had the word "Halloween" and that was in the "By" line. No books showed up with "Halloween" in the title. If I repeated the search placing Halloween in quotes, I got what I originally expected ... only books with Halloween in the title; 187 of them.

Strange search algorithms at work here!

Cheers, never thought of trying with quotes as it was just a single word search

[david_e]

Originally Posted by tkavan

Like other forum members, I don't find the Kobobooks search function to be state-of-the-art. Here's this morning's treat: I searched for "Always on: The Conservative Party" (using the quotes). Up comes a list of the Japanese version of the Harry Potter books.

How odd. I was doing a search a few days ago for a book and got those same Harry Potter results you did.

Can't recall the title but I was looking for, but nothing remotely close to yours.

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by Woodstonian

I just repeated what you did. Strangely enough, I only got 10 results when I clicked on the "halloween" link (where it says "You searched for ...") and 7 were erotica. Only one had the word "Halloween" and that was in the "By" line. No books showed up with "Halloween" in the title. If I repeated the search placing Halloween in quotes, I got what I originally expected ... only books with Halloween in the title; 187 of them.

Strange search algorithms at work here!

Weird though that searching "halloween" without quotes doesn't work. And where does it get the results from that it does show?

Originally Posted by david_e

How odd. I was doing a search a few days ago for a book and got those same Harry Potter results you did.

Can't recall the title but I was looking for, but nothing remotely close to yours.

Yep, me too. Also can't remember what I was searching for either.

[rashkae]

I think I figured it out... Kobo tried to implement a neat "Suggested Searches" feature, similar to the one Google uses to catch typos. (For example, if you search Google for Haloween, it will instead display results for Halloween, then include a link to search for 'haloween' in case that's what you really wanted.

However, for some reason, Kobo extended the replacement table from comon typos to broad association, which can have ... interesting results if you search for books whose title or authors have keywords in the replacement table.

Kobo Search does work the same way though. If you search for Halloween, you will see below the "Displaying results for:" line a "You searched for "Halloween". Click on that small text Halloween and the search results will be for Halloween.

Kobo really should get a grip on this 'feature' fast. Substituting Title or Author Name searches with something completely different is going to attracks lawyers like sharks to blooded water.

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by rashkae

I think I figured it out... Kobo tried to implement a neat "Suggested Searches" feature, similar to the one Google uses to catch typos. (For example, if you search Google for Haloween, it will instead display results for Halloween, then include a link to search for 'haloween' in case that's what you really wanted.

However, for some reason, Kobo extended the replacement table from comon typos to broad association, which can have ... interesting results if you search for books whose title or authors have keywords in the replacement table.

Kobo Search does work the same way though. If you search for Halloween, you will see below the "Displaying results for:" line a "You searched for "Halloween". Click on that small text Halloween and the search results will be for Halloween.

Kobo really should get a grip on this 'feature' fast. Substituting Title or Author Name searches with something completely different is going to attracks lawyers like sharks to blooded water.

Thanks for that... that makes sense.

So, I went to try it. And indeed, searching for halloween (no quotes) gives me a search for "horror", which it says it has done. It also says I searched for "halloween," and apparently that word is a link. So, I clicked that link, thinking I'd now get a list of books from a search for "halloween." BUT, instead, I get a list of adult fiction?! The first one is understandable, as it has "halloween" in the "by" field... but the others? As if only the first book from the search is displayed and the rest are associated to the first book. These are completely different results (except for the first book) than when I'd actually search for "halloween" (with quotes).

So you're suggestion comes very close, but there's slightly more too it. Weird.

[andreabc]

It's very weird. I wanted to search for books by author Brigid Kemmerer. If I just search for kemmerer, I get a single result (a book with Kemmerer as the title), I only see her books if I search for brigid kemmerer.

[corroonb]

I like buying books at Kobo and I'm starting to expect a certain level of incompetence as the norm but their search engine at Kobobooks.com is incredibly bad. Not only can one not filter out all the free and not so free self-published garbage but it often returns 100,000 results for a simple title search.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by corroonb

I like buying books at Kobo and I'm starting to expect a certain level of incompetence as the norm but their search engine at Kobobooks.com is incredibly bad. Not only can one not filter out all the free and not so free self-published garbage but it often returns 100,000 results for a simple title search.

As near as I can tell, they will display exact matches first and then try to match any word in the search string. Much like Google/Bing/whatever, this can result in pages of results that have nothing to do with your search. The Kobo search also does not remove common words from your search -- including a 'the' or 'an', returns a massive result set. Even funnier is trying a single letter search and seeing what the display says it actually searched for.

My wife got a chuckle when one of her searches for children's book returned a study guide to illustrated dental embryology, histology and anatomy. Not quite what the usual 8 year old is looking for.

Regards,
David