Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by noer 2475 days ago
>Spotify being the 23rd result for a "music" search is absurd.

That search term is so broad it's difficult to figure out exactly what the users intent is for that. Do they want to listen to music? Do they want to create or record music?

FWIW, I just searched for "music" and saw: An ad, a story ("run with music"), apple music, two music players I've never heard of and finally Spotify in position 6.

2 comments

>That search term is so broad it's difficult to figure out exactly what the users intent is for that

I disagree. It's broad in the sense that that the user could be searching for any number of things. It's not broad in the sense that the user is likely looking for a music listening app.

Think of the real world equivalent. In common conversation when someone says "I like music", do you presume that they enjoy listening to, or making, music?

I'd say the intent is pretty clear for the majority of users.

>That search term is so broad it's difficult to figure out exactly what the users intent is for that.

Search optimization. Determine what most users ultimately end up selecting for specific queries, build up your data set over time, then weigh priorities and determine result order based on that.

... which might explain why Spotify ranks lower than the expectation here. Perhaps more people search for "spotify" when they want Spotify.