Search is not using translations (no localized search possible)

[agilelogix]

I want to report some ranking issue in locales of the English version, the plugin directory ranking change in locales (en-gb, en-ca, en-au), all the languages are almost same as they are English but the ranking is not same. Please have a look at this problem.

Example:

​https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/Store+Locator/
​https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/search/Store+Locator/

Both the searches are same but results are different in locales, I don't understand this, as both languages are in English.

Thank you

[SergeyBiryukov]

Replying to agilelogix:

Both the searches are same but results are different in locales, I don't understand this, as both languages are in English.

en_US and en_GB are different locales though.

Looks like there are ​153 waiting strings for Agile Store Locator's readme in en_GB. Once those strings are approved by the en_GB team, I guess the plugin should rank higher for that locale.

[agilelogix]

Hi @SergeyBiryukov 100% approved for en-ca, but the result is same.

​https://en-ca.wordpress.org/plugins/search/store+locator/

Please check this.

Thanks

[zodiac1978]

I was wondering about this search issue as well.
The ranking is totally different between international and local (e.g. German) directories.

For example the plugin “Advanced Ads” is not on the first page here:
​https://de.wordpress.org/plugins/search/adsense/
but here on 5th place:
​https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/adsense/

Although it is the only one with a German translation, which is contrary to the the assumption from @SergeyBiryukov that this should have a positive effect.

If I search for translated text from the readme it doesn’t find the plugin at all:
​https://de.wordpress.org/plugins/search/anzeigentypen/
or
​https://de.wordpress.org/plugins/search/anzeigen/

Seems to be a bigger problem with non-US directories and ranking in general.

[zubairharoon]

Yes, indeed there is a problem in locale directory searching, the algorithm is not working properly for locale searching, we have to wait for someone to take it and fix it.

[SergeyBiryukov]

We've noticed a similar issue in Russian directory a while ago: ​https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/reviews/ and ​https://ru.wordpress.org/plugins/search/reviews/ return different results.

I assumed it was due to translations being one of the ranking factors, but none of the first few plugins have a Russian translation, so I'm not sure what else affects the results on localized directories.

[ocean90]

Related: #1496, #2812

Afaik there is still nothing that fills the search index with new translations.

[zubairharoon]

Please check this searching, 100% Translation provided and approved, but results are not correct.

​https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/Store+Locator/
​https://en-gb.wordpress.org/plugins/search/Store+Locator/

​https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/Store+Locator/
​https://en-ca.wordpress.org/plugins/search/Store+Locator/

​https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/Store+Locator/
​https://en-au.wordpress.org/plugins/search/Store+Locator/

[zodiac1978]

Replying to ocean90:

Afaik there is still nothing that fills the search index with new translations.

What does that actual mean? And if this is the reason, who can fix this? I read the backlogs from the slack meetings the last times, but this (high priority!) ticket doesn't get mentioned at all.

Is there a roadmap when this Plugin Directoty v3 issues get tackled (or should get tackled)? Maybe @tellyworth can clarify this a bit?

[afercia]

Following today's conversation on Slack and just to add one more example: searching for "Yoast" on the default locale, "Yoast SEO" is the first result:
​https://wordpress.org/plugins/search/yoast/

Same search with the Italian locale, "Yoast SEO" is in the 5th page:
​https://it.wordpress.org/plugins/search/yoast/
​https://it.wordpress.org/plugins/search/yoast/page/5/

Instead, the first result in the first page is "ACF Content Analysis for Yoast SEO" and seems to me it's not translated in Italian.

[ocean90]

@gibrown Can you review please?

[gibrown]

Ya, the issue here is that the translations are not getting properly synced, so for some reason Yoast does not have any translations, and so it is getting ranked much lower.

I think @tellyworth was looking into this problem, but I am not sure where it is at.

[tellyworth]

This should be partially improved in [6197] - in that revision all en_* locales should produce identical results.

[tellyworth]

In 7478:

Plugin dir: sync translated content to postmeta. Props @noisysocks

This runs the Translation_Sync cron job periodically.

Fixes #3169
Fixes #2977

[ocean90]

In 7479:

Revert [7478] due to out of memory errors.

See #2977.

[ocean90]

Reverted [7478] in [7479].

E_ERROR: object-cache.php:228 - Allowed memory size of 268435456 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 67108872 bytes)

[webzunft]

Any chance my team and I can help with this? We tried to reproduce it locally, but are missing the information used in Elasticsearch and the real database information. Any idea how we can simulate that?

Thanks

[zodiac1978]

After six months this is still unfixed, although people are providing to help. @tellyworth, @noisysocks and @ocean90 - what is planned to fix this after the last patch was reverted because of the memory problem?

[tellyworth]

In 8461:

Plugin directory: fix memory consumption issue in translation sync and re-enable cron job.

$wp_object_cache->group_ops was growing unbounded. Also cleaned up related PHP notices caused by undefined values in stats array.

Fixes #2977

[dd32]

In 10114:

Plugin Directory: Search: Index translated content for plugins that release from trunk.

See #2977.

[dd32]

In 10115:

Plugin Directory: API: Ensure searches use the correct locale when performing an ElasticSearch search.

See #2977.

[dd32]

In 10340:

Plugin Directory: Fix a variable typo in a cron task.

This would've caused plugins that have a stable & development readme project having their translations for search pulled from the dev readme rather than the stable readme.

Introduced in [10114] (So that change actually made it always use the dev-readme project).
See #2977.