The Movie Database Support
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Search Movie vs. Multi different set of results
posted by celestianxSTAFFMOD on September 14, 2014 at 2:35 PM
Hi,
I was very pleased with the introduction of a "multi" search, it's very handy. However, I tried the search for "her" on the regulary movie endpoint and multi endpoint and results differ in terms of movie results. The "multi" endpoint returns "The Amazing Spiderman", "The Prince" as 2nd and 3rd results, "Her" is the first but I think there is something wrong. The "movie endpoint" returns exactly the same search results
Reply by Travis Bell
on September 14, 2014 at 9:00 PM
The difference is that the multi search by default, uses the "ngram" search, so if you try that on the regular movie search, you should see the same results. It should still be matching exact matches first though so if it's not, I will have to take a look at it.
Taking a look at my test for this query:
Her is the first result so it's working as designed. Keep in mind, with the ngram matching, you're hitting any and every title that has
herin it. As you type more you narrow those results down. It's tough to have a very narrow result list with 3 characters.Reply by celestianx
on September 15, 2014 at 1:14 AM
Thanks Travis for the quick answer. I was thinking about that option first but then I saw this was not available for the multi search so I thought it was something else. Now, if I understand correctly, I still don't understand why "The Amazing Spiderman 2" and "The Prince" were given back as results though.
I don't see any "her" string in these except if you tell me it looks in other attributes that may have it. I remember the french title for "the amazing spiderman 2" is "le destin d'un hero", so if there is any reference to a foreign title, that would explain it!
Concerning your remark, it does send "her" as first result so there it works like a charm on that part.
Reply by Travis Bell
on September 15, 2014 at 9:57 AM
Hey celestianx,
Some of this might be getting tweaked shortly for other reasons but the basics are that we look for exact matches first. Then, we look for matches in the original title, translated title and alternative titles fields. Each of those is weighted less, and less so the closer the match in say, an original title the better ranked it will be if it is found in an alternative title.
The string "her" can be found in three of the alternative titles in Spider-Man 2 which is probably why it's being ranked so highly. The Prince's Hungarian translation is "A herceg".
Cheers.
Reply by celestianx
on September 15, 2014 at 10:59 AM
I see. Well, as long as it works as intended! I was just underlining this to make sure this is not a bug.
Cheers to you as well and thanks for your great work.
Reply by Travis Bell
on September 25, 2014 at 10:19 AM
Hey celestianx,
As I mentioned, some of this was planned to get tweaked and it did. These changes only affect the multi and person search so far but it's interesting to compare the results. If you look at the search:
You'll see less random results I think. Hopefully it's a bit cleaner now :D