internetarchive / internetarchive/openlibrary

Investigate peculiar search ranking

Open
#10,969 13 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub
Lead: @cdrini Module: Solr Needs: Breakdown Priority: 3 Theme: Search Type: Bug
Dominant language
Python
Stars
6.7k
Forks
2k
Avg merge
2d 19h
Merged PRs (30d)
138

Description

### Problem

This search is for some reason displaying first a book with a less exact match and fewer editions... it should be displaying the Dale Carnegie edition first. Might need to tweak some of the search logic.

- https://openlibrary.org/search?q=Comment+se+faire+des+amis+et+influencer+les+autres&mode=everything

Some similar examples:
- https://openlibrary.org/search?q=L%27homme+le+plus+riche+de+Babylone&mode=everything

### Reproducing the bug

NA

### Context

- Browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc):
- OS (Windows, Mac, etc):
- Logged in (Y/N):
- Environment (prod, dev, local): prod

### Breakdown

#### Requirements Checklist
* [ ]

#### Related files

*

#### Stakeholders

*


#### Instructions for Contributors

- Please [run these commands](https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/wiki/Git-Cheat-Sheet#working-on-your-branch) to ensure your repository is up to date **before** [creating a new branch](https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/wiki/Git-Cheat-Sheet#making-changes-and-creating-a-pull-request) to work on this issue and **each time after** pushing code to Github, because the pre-commit bot may add commits to your PRs upstream.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

Research direction

Start by reproducing the two linked production searches and inspect the Python search-ranking logic; the issue names no related files, tests, or entry points. Done means identifying why less exact matches rank first and correcting the ordering so the Dale Carnegie edition ranks first in these examples.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
search
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.