Keyword Search not returning expected results

BradfordBenn · January 6, 2012

Keywords tonight are making my brain hurt and I think it is due to some bugs and inconsistent behaviours. I will walk through the whole process and point out where I see inconsistencies and problems. I am not sure if they should be different bugs or not. It also could be my header search box is part of the customization but I would think it should function according to the documentation.

Give us your site name: photos.bradfordbenn.com

Describe the problem: Keyword searches are not providing the expected results based on the help file and other experiences within my same domain.

List the steps to replicate and recreate the problem

Go to http://photos.bradfordbenn.com/
In the search box in the upper right hand corner, to the right of the contact tab I created, enter the words Point Mugu. Do not enclose them in quotes. Click search
The resultant URL is http://photos.bradfordbenn.com/search/index.mg?searchWords=point+mugu&searchType=InUser&NickName=bradfordbenn&sa=Search
The results are as follows
- "Bradford's Keywords Matching 'point mugu' No keywords were found. Try another keyword search." Unexpected Result
- "Bradford's Galleries Matching 'point mugu' No galleries were found. Try another search." Expected Result
- "Bradford's Photos Matching 'point mugu'" 6 Results Expected Result
Click on the first thumbnail to see the matching photo in its gallery
Under the image the keywords are California, Point Mugu, Point Mugu Naval Air Station
If I click on the hyperlink point mugu (http://photos.bradfordbenn.com/keyword/point%20mugu) under the image I get different results
I get the same same six photos, expected result
The unexpected result is that the keywords it is displaying is point mugu with "related keywords: point mugu naval air station | california | missile
combine with: +point mugu naval air station | +california | +missile"
I had uploaded the images using Lightroom 3 and the SmugMug publish service, plugin 1.0.1.7
The keywords in LR3 are entered as California, Point Mugu, Point Mugu Naval Air Station which match what is shown on SmugMug Desired and documented but not expected result
According to the help file http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/93291 "Enter your keywords separated by spaces. To group them together you can separate the terms with a comma or enclose the term in quotes."

I read the wiki post as well http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/98690-how-does-search-work-search-syntax-tips-and-tricks- so I thought that if I put "Point Mugu" with the quotes in the header search box (resultant URL is http://photos.bradfordbenn.com/search/index.mg?searchWords=%22Point+Mugu%22&searchType=InUser&NickName=bradfordbenn&sa=Search)
I received back no results at all. Unexpected Results
According to the Wiki page "Case does not matter. So Ball and ball will return the same results" and "Searching for two or more words enclosed in quotation marks will return all photos or galleries containing ANY of the words" so it should find the keyword "Point Mugu" and display the 6 results that occurred in step 4
If I click the search URLs on the resultant empty results I get directed to http://www.smugmug.com/search/ Unexpected Result as it does not indicate that it is taking the user out of my domain.
When I place "Point Mugu" with quotes in the smugmug.com search box (resultant URL is http://www.smugmug.com/search/index.mg?searchWords="Point+Mugu"&searchType=Image") unexpected result is no results.

So I think that the search queries are not behaving consistently nor matching the documentation.

Now the other thing that confuses me and that started this all was the way names are handled in Lightroom.

If I put in Matthew Ferguson as a keyword in Lightroom, the result is matthew, ferguson as two keywords on SmugMug. Not desired but working as documented
If I put in Matthew Ferguson, Mickey Mouse as 2 keywords in Lightroom, the result is matthew ferguson, Mickey Mouse as two keywords on SmugMug. Desired and as documented.
If I click on the keyword under the picture of Matthew (http://photos.bradfordbenn.com/keyword/ferguson) it only returns the results where ferguson is a distinct keyword. Unexpected Result
If I go to the gallery http://photos.bradfordbenn.com/People/Friends/Matt-Ferguson/ which I created as a Smart Collection in Lightroom based on the keyword 'Matthew Ferguson' one can see that there are more pictures of Matthew.

The confusion happened in that sometimes Matthew Ferguson is one SmugMug keyword and sometimes it is two SmugMug keywords. So I was not always finding the results. While it is as documented it is not intuitive as in Lightroom Matthew Ferguson is always one keyword. If I try to place it in quotes Matthew Ferguson becomes one keyword on SmugMug, and the keyword "Matthew Ferguson" [with the quotes] in Lightroom. The with quotes and without quotes ends up being two different keywords in LR.

So all these things together makes search results inconsistent. So I have to do Smart Collections in LR and new uploads to SmugMug to get some of the dynamic galleries that I want easily.

Does that make sense? I have some video and screen captures that might help...

Provide links to your galleries, photos, etc so we can look
The source of the "point mugu" photos are all in the gallery http://photos.bradfordbenn.com/Travel/California-July-2011/
The source photos for "Matthew Ferguson" are in the gallery http://photos.bradfordbenn.com/People/Friends/Matt-Ferguson/

Let us know your system, and browser and version
OS is Mac OS X Lion 10.7.2 (11C74)
Hardware is Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac12,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 3.4 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 8 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Boot ROM Version: IM121.0047.B1D
SMC Version (system): 1.72f2
Browser is Google Chrome 16.0.912.63 with the preview of the beta skin or Firefox 8.0.1 for the release skin - same results

rainforest1155 · January 6, 2012

Hi Brad,

I'm sorry about your troubles. 1. It's a logged issue that keyword search doesn't support searching for multi word keywords at this point. It only returns proper results if you search for a single word keyword. That should only affect the "keyword results" section of the search results.

2. The related and combine keywords function is working as designed. It's looking at what other keywords are entered for photos from your search results and allows you to narrow down the results with the "combine" function. The "releated" allows you to select a different keyword that's used on photos in your search results.

3. Correction - it's actually by design that the empty search results point to www.smugmug.com to broaden the search. You can hide that with advanced customizations.
.allusersearch {
display:none;
}
should do the trick.

4. I don't think the quotation mark search is supported. I'll check with our team and see if we can get the documentation updated.

5. I'm not seeing your Matthew Ferguson keyword issue - working fine for me with just that one keyword in a photo. Please update your Lightroom plugin to the latest version and try again:
http://help.smugmug.com/customer/portal/articles/121321-lightroom-plugin-update

BradfordBenn · January 6, 2012

Hi Sebastian-

Thanks for the response. Hopefully the questions made sense. I will try out the new CSS and see if that gets what I want. It is not that I mind searching SmugMug, I just don't like that it is not really on "my site" any more so the user can get confused.

In terms of the Matthew Ferguson keyword issue, I am still seeing the issue. If I do a search for keyword ferguson (http://photos.bradfordbenn.com/keyword/ferguson/) I get a result of 18 photos; where Matthew and Ferguson are two seperate keywords.
If I go to the gallery I created, where he is tagged in every photo, and that is how LR is finding him the return result is 46 images. I made sure to chose ferguson as that is a constant in all the pictures and does not vary between Matt and Matthew. As an example, if you look at this image (http://photos.bradfordbenn.com/People/Friends/Matt-Ferguson/14433200_fL7MnR/1080775350_kYrR6 or http://photos.bradfordbenn.com/photos/100116-123055/1080775350_kYrR6-XL-2.jpg) you will see ferguson is in there as part of the single keyword Matthew Ferguson. Should the search find that one as well since it contains the word Ferguson?

Off to download the latest plug-in....

BradfordBenn · January 6, 2012

I just did a republish of all 46 images in the Lightroom Smart Collection and now when I do a search for the keyword ferguson (http://photos.bradfordbenn.com/keyword/ferguson) I get a result of 26 photos. However the image of Ferguson with Mickey Mouse is not one of them.

Is it the case that it is not doing a keyword contains "*ferguson*" query but a keyword == "ferguson"?

I am trying to avoid having to create keywords "ferguson", "matthew ferguson", "matt ferguson", "matt", and "matthew" so that if I search for "matt" or "ferguson" I will find pictures of Matt.

Yes, I am just using him as an example...

rainforest1155 · January 8, 2012

Brad,
Maybe the issue comes from republishing? Try publishing a couple photos from scratch to a test gallery and see what happens.

BradfordBenn · January 9, 2012

Sebastian-

I have found another keyword issue that might be related and have taken this over to the help desk. I let John know I was already working with you on the issue. With some of the new tools I thought it might be faster. I'll let you know what we find.

Keyword Search not returning expected results

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