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Why do foreign movies with "generic" names appear so far down in the search results?
posted by jerasSTAFFMOD on February 27, 2017 at 3:28 PM
When I search for a foreign movie with a relatively generic name (i.e., there are many search results) by its exact translated english title, why does the movie I'm searching for appear so far down in the search results?
For example, searching for the title "The Past" (2013), the movie appears on page 4 of 7 even though I have searched for the exact english translation of the title. Appearing before it are many titles that don't even have the word "past" in the title, and certainly several dozen that don't exactly match my search term.
https://api.themoviedb.org/3/search/movie?api_key=####&query=the%20past&page=4
{
"page": 4,
"results": [
...
{
"poster_path": "/kjerwTkZJev6Ve5DS0hRbaOuVJb.jpg",
"adult": false,
"overview": "After four years apart, Ahmad returns to his wife Marie in Paris in order to progress their divorce. During his brief stay, he cannot help noticing the strained relationship between Marie and her daughter Lucie. As he attempts to improve matters between mother and daughter Ahmad unwittingly lifts the lid on a long buried secret...",
"release_date": "2013-05-17",
"genre_ids": [
18,
9648
],
"id": 152780,
"original_title": "Le passé",
"original_language": "fr",
"title": "The Past",
"backdrop_path": "/ewD6siG8B0zKkhC1jdnLxtMoCC9.jpg",
"popularity": 1.874335,
"vote_count": 120,
"video": false,
"vote_average": 7.1
},
...
"total_results": 132,
"total_pages": 7
}
Another example is the movie "Dragon" (2011), which appears on page 5 of 35.
https://api.themoviedb.org/3/search/movie?api_key=####&query=dragon&page=5
{
"page": 5,
"results": [
...
{
"poster_path": "/8Ef1HBcvguFFDobgxMs8V0ISbBl.jpg",
"adult": false,
"overview": "A sinful martial arts expert wants to start a new tranquil life, only to be hunted by a determined detective and his former master.",
"release_date": "2011-07-04",
"genre_ids": [
18,
28,
53
],
"id": 70057,
"original_title": "武俠",
"original_language": "zh",
"title": "Dragon",
"backdrop_path": "/uERR7SXiL3Qafuitf3levxXxf7I.jpg",
"popularity": 1.65164,
"vote_count": 55,
"video": false,
"vote_average": 6.9
},
...
"total_results": 699,
"total_pages": 35
}
So why do exact matches of translated title names not appear at the top of the search results?
Reply by Travis Bell
on March 1, 2017 at 6:55 PM
Not all titles fields are treated equally. There is a lot more weight put on the original title.
I'm hoping to find some time later this year to completely re-factor search. There's a lot that has changed since this version was built in ~2013.
Reply by jeras
on March 2, 2017 at 1:00 PM
But surely that isn't the way a user would expect it to work. Isn't a user most likely going to search on the title of the movie as that title appears in his country, in his language? That is, the translated title, or the "title" field in the json response. Typically, a user would have trouble even figuring out how to enter the characters of the original title from his own keyboard, as in the examples above.
FWIW, I tried searching for the examples above on IMDb, Netflix, and iTunes. Generally speaking, they all return the movie that I expect as the first item, or at worst within the first few search results. Those search engines behave more or less exactly as I want. The TMDB search engine does not.
Reply by Travis Bell
on March 2, 2017 at 1:10 PM
Yes, I agree. This is why it's on my list of things to get to sometime this year.
But in order to get there search has to basically be completely torn down and rebuilt from the ground up. It's a large task and not one I have time for at the moment.