(no subject)

[lirazel]

Goodreads' search function is bad and I do not approve. It seems to return the most popular books related to what you type in, not the ones who are most relevant to the words you've actually typed? For instance, I was searching for Roman Women: Everyday Life in Hadrian's Britain. I typed in Roman Women. The returned results had a couple of books that were actually about Roman women, but also included Tess of the D'Urbervilles and One Thousand White Women. The title I was looking for did not appear at all until I started typing in the subtitle. WHY????? The fact that I always have to remember the subtitles or else it's impossible to find books on this site drives me batty.

Another example: Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country is like the fifteenth result, behind, obviously, some books also called Ghostland but also behind books in a series called Ghostland Worlds, A Babe in Ghostland, etc.

Comments

[lebateleur]

Goodreads' search function is bad and I do not approve. It seems to return the most popular books related to what you type in, not the ones who are most relevant to the words you've actually typed?

That's because it's owned by Amazon. By design, it's meant to push you toward the books Amazon wants to sell, not necessarily the titles or topics you're searching.

[lirazel]

Well. That explains...so much.

I mean, I knew it was owned by Amazon, but I didn't even think about them manipulating the searches. But of course they would. Of course.

[gryfndor_godess]

Ugh I've always hated the search function as well (I'll type in an *exact title* and it still doesn't bring up the correct book first!), and now it makes (terrible) sense! :(

[lirazel]

I know! It's a terrible thing to realize but also explains everything!

I am so conflicted about goodreads because, aside from the search function, I really like most everything about it, but also AMAZON. UGH.

[theseatheseatheopensea]

I've been thinking about joining Goodreads again, to motivate myself to read more this year, but the bad search function is discouraging. Maybe I'll rejoin Librarything, which feels more library-ish ;) or Inventaire, which is open source and looks pretty cool!

[lirazel]

I actually really like it, but the fact that Amazon owns it is really frustrating and the source of all the bad things about it.

[theseatheseatheopensea]

Yep, the amazon connection isn't to my liking either. I'm going to look for an alternative!

[sawthefaeriequeen]

From what I've read, it harvests your data (what you've starred, read etc.) and tries to get you to buy the more popular shit tangentially related to it, is why.

[lirazel]

*sigh* I wish from the bottom of my heart that it hadn't been sold to Amazon.

[belecrivain]

It wouldn't surprise me if Amazon is manipulating Goodreads search results, but I haven't found anything confirming it at first glance. (This article is about Amazon searches itself.) I would expect that fact, if it's true, to come up in self-publishing news spaces such as Electric Speed or The Creative Penn, because there's always a TON of discussion in self-publishing about how Amazon advertises or doesn't advertise things and what that means for authors. (E.g. a few months ago Amazon was apparently pulling "also-boughts" -- the little carousel that says "Customers who bought this also bought" -- and replacing it with more sponsored suggestions. So talk that had previously been about keeping track of your also-boughts so that you could be associated with similar authors switched to worries about paid ads.)

Anyway. I tried searching "ghostland site:goodreads.com" on DuckDuckGo and the book you were looking for was the fifth result. (It has to be DDG, apparently; Startpage is blocked.)

[lirazel]

Interesting! I really dislike the fact that books with completely different titles come up listed before books with the exact wording you were looking for, just because you didn't want to type out the whole subtitle. There's got to be a better way of doing it!