HN Explorer

Saying goodbye to Octopart-powered HNSearch

39 points by andres ↗ HN
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)

22 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 63.1 ms ] thread
GrahamsNumber
I'm sorry to say, but at least right now the new search is absolutely dreadful. Try searching for "Go".
redox_
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
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".

uladzislau
Does anyone else agree that the site thumbnails in the new search just distract from the search results without adding any value?
redox_
What do you think about http://hn.algolia.com/legacy ?
sdesol
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
This is much better, thank you for it.
yebyen
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
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.

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"

staunch
The mass of knowledge stored in the HN archives is considerable and HNSearch has been a great way to mine it. Thank you!
flocial
Is there any reason why you can't hand over hnsearch.com?
macrotim
Is there a way to sort by points? I see only a radio button to "Sort by date."
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.

avalaunch
Will sort by points functionality be added? Please... pretty please.
wib
I use the !hn bang syntax on DuckDuckGo daily… Here's hoping it stays available.
DanBC
I very much liked your HN search. I could find things.