One of the things that has bothered me in the past is the ranking of our search results, so this weekend I've spent some hours tuning our Xapian index, and testing various parameters for the ranking algorithm. I'm happy to report that as a result, Our search results are much improved.
Macupdate bragged about their relevant search results earlier this spring, pointing out that itunes would show up on page three on the search result. Thanks to a combination of weighting the title heavier, and including use counts in the algorithm, iTunes shows up first on a query for itunes, and all the other popular queries they mention on macupdate. And in a fraction of the query time, even with their ajax update magic (does this actually help?)
Hope this makes you iusethis use more pleasant. :)
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