Better "did you mean"

Implemented

Implemented
Will not implement
In-progress
Under review
Maybe later

in DuckDuckGo Forum • 1 year ago

At times, the "did you mean" feature that helps auto-correct search queries doesn't work very well. Maybe it could be improved.

Also, if it already doesn't then it could also be extended to give context sensitive suggestions. For example if I search for "cricket sat" then it could ask me if I meant "cricket bat".

How is it currently implemented?

Replies(11)

evaryont

BTW, when I type "zsh" I don't mean "ssh", I mean zsh, the awesome bash replacement.

There are some other terms like zsh, which on first pass would seem to be an error, but really aren't. I can't remember any more off the top of my head, but the dictionary could hopefully be improved as well.

Comment

yegg13

Re: Better "did you mean"

1 year ago

I just pushed a lot of code live to improve Spelling in both directions. A few days ago I made some personal DDG extensions that would make it appear in more situations. Clearly there were some false positives.

The cricket sat/bat was one of those, and I just fixed that. The zsh example was from Yahoo actually, but I just layered some more stuff on top of that, and so it no longer shows either.

I'd appreciate bringing more examples here when you see them so I can continue to improve it.

Comment

dhruvbird

Re: Better "did you mean"

1 year ago

Searching for "how does solr work" on ddg suggests that you search for "how does solar work". However, in an even more surprising turn of events, the same query on google makes it return results for "how does solar work"!!!! This can easily confuse anyone...

I doubt there's anything anyone can do about this...
Maybe document it somewhere and let some researchers pick it up.

I think this is where ddg can come in, since it is a perfect platform for results in Information Retrieval to be tested and implemented. Its got real users with real problems and if anyone can solve them, nothing like it...

You could probably think of Open Sourcing this (did you mean) component with a brief documentation of its interface so that anyone who can program a similar component can contribute back.

yegg13

Re: Better "did you mean"

1 year ago

Thx for this example as well. I just re-orgd a lot of the Spelling code, which fixed this example. Keep 'em coming!

Google, Yahoo & Bing all now often show you results for what you didn't search for, automatically. I specifically decided not to do this, but if you don't, you really need to have good 'did you mean' stuff.

I've gotten several complaints comparing with Google on queries where they obviously misspelled, but Google did show the correct spelling automatically. Clearly, it's hit or miss but I prefer the did you mean and showing the misspelled results.

I'll think about open sourcing this piece.

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jwalantso..

Re: Better "did you mean"

7 months ago

I agree, showing misspelled results should be the way to go.

The words people search on could be of hundreds of languages other than En. Showing results from En corrected would not make sense when the word was actually from other language and not misspelled as per that language.

Here's one example: http://duckduckgo.com/?q=bhupat+vadodariya

Its a name of a very famous author of literature of Gujarati language. His name is spelled correctly, but the did you mean is suggesting something wrong. However, the good thing is DDG has shown results for the original query, and that's what I was searching for.

Guest

Re: Better "did you mean"

6 months ago

Wow, we got spamming guy here.

Comment

AGreenEar..

Re: Better "did you mean"

6 months ago

Yeah, some automatic spam bot went crazy and spammed every topic on the forum.

I'm deleting the spam posts as we speak, but it's going to take a while. I'll ask Yegg if there is anyway to automatically block the spammer from posting in the future.

Moderator

jwalantso..