Making WordPress.org

Opened 3 years ago

Last modified 3 years ago

#5773 new defect (bug)

Change search algorithm in themes page

Reported by: kafleg's profile kafleg Owned by:
Milestone: Improved Search Priority: normal
Component: Theme Directory Keywords: needs-patch
Cc:

Description

Some of the theme authors are mentioning other popular themes name in their description. Because of that, when user search the name of other popular theme, their theme will appear on the search page.
Example: https://wordpress.org/themes/search/astra/ Here, theme Astra is searched but some theme with text astra in the description appear.

Also, you can see how authors are doing tricks and write popular theme name in their description. https://wordpress.org/themes/coin-market/

Change History (8)

#1 follow-up: @Otto42
3 years ago

One idea would be to have exact matches on the slug only show that exact match, and perhaps any children of that exact match theme, if it has any. This would eliminate the searching of copy content for exact name matches.

#2 in reply to: ↑ 1 @dd32
3 years ago

Replying to Otto42:

One idea would be to have exact matches on the slug only show that exact match

One problem with that is the generic named themes, for example shop and gold.

This appears to be more a guideline thing than a search algorithm problem, themes should not be spamming, and mentioning many popular themes/plugins without need is.. well.. keyword stuffing which is spam.

#3 @dd32
3 years ago

  • Component changed from General to Theme Directory

#4 follow-up: @kafleg
3 years ago

We don't have any specific guideline for theme description. So, we are not able to take action on this now. As @dd32 that might be a problem too for generic themes name.

If the solution is not that easy then we need to add this as a requirement until we find the solution.

#5 in reply to: ↑ 4 @dd32
3 years ago

Replying to kafleg:

We don't have any specific guideline for theme description.

I would suggest that should be the first thing to follow up on here. Perhaps considering what plugin directory guidelines that exist that could be relevant, but have no theme directory equiv. You'd probably looking at #12 and #18 be made effective sooner-than-later and use reasonable discretion on enforcement during a "notice period" to existing authors to clean up their act.

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #meta by tellyworth. View the logs.


3 years ago

This ticket was mentioned in Slack in #themereview by kafleg. View the logs.


3 years ago

#8 @gibrown
3 years ago

  • Milestone set to Improved Search
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