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itch.io Community » itch.io » Questions & Support

Assets not appearing on search

A topic by ZerinLABS created Mar 21, 2024 Views: 322 Replies: 9
Viewing posts 1 to 3
ZerinLABS269 days ago(+1)

Hi there folks,
I've been trying some improve a bit the discoverability of my game assets by adjustikng the name of the assets, the tags and the descriptions but for some reason no matter what I set there the assets doesn't appear through a regular search even if I'm super specific about the search keywords I use. Surprisingly other absolutely non related assets appear instead. 🙄

Could you give us a bit of a hint or tip about what's happening and how we could be solving that?

On the other hand... once you change the tags or description of one assets (and you save it)... 

is that change propagated immediately? (so it will be find on the new search) or that update takes a while

thanks!

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No Time To PlayModerator269 days ago (1 edit)
Could you give us a bit of a hint or tip about what's happening and how we could be solving that?

As explained in lots and lots of topics, the search box is optimized for full title searches, not keywords. Please stop trying to "optimize", itch.io doesn't work that way. And you can find your project by tag if you pick the right tags in the Browse section. Not from the search box. Hope this helps.

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ZerinLABS268 days ago (1 edit)

Absolutely, thanks for the clarification :)
+thanks for the quick response

With this information, I've been doing some other tests with the title.
As you said if you search for the exact title the asset appears flawlessly, however if you misspell on single word other assets (with a lot less relatable titles) appear instead (btw the original asset it doesn't appear at all)

For instance, if I search for "Lowpoly modular dungeon : The Village" it's all good and appears without any issue.
However if I search for "Lowpoly modular dungeon The Village" the asset doesn't appear and instead other quite different title assets show up (like for instance an asset named "Village Vista - A Charming 2D Village Simulator")

While I understand the first asset could be listed on lower positions or so, I would expect the asset to show up at least because of the search words content accuracy.
Anyway, simply hilighting this as I found this behaviour a little bit strange, and I don't know if this was intended or a bug or something.

cheers!

EDIT: BTW, I forgot to mention that the tag filtering worked great, but it took me a minute to understand how to use it properly.

Reply
redonihunter268 days ago

The problem with search is, that people would have to know what they search for. By name.

And assets typcially do not have a name. Not in the sense that games have a name.

So those items have pseudo names that are actually the topics they are meant for. Or qualities they have.

Applying any type of name search for assets is therefore besides the point and will not work. The algorithm tries to put a name relevance on items that do not have names at all. Of course it does not work.

Tags and search with regular internet search engines will give far better results.

But as this comes up every now and then, from developers of said assets, how are the people looking for assets do it? Do they use the search bar? And if not, how did they learn that is is useless for searching assets.

Actually, the search bar does not even indicate that it searches for assets. It reads: search for games and creators ;-)

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ZerinLABS268 days ago

You're totally right.

Assets have a name indeed, but that name is not the "string" that users type when looking for meshes, textures icons and stuff like that.

I guess that when you're looking for a game you're looking for an specific "result", while when you're looking for game-assets you wnat to filter th assets that may match what you need

Until now, when I was using the search bar to look for some assets I was mainly using it describing what I need:
something like: [lowpoly modular sci-fi meshes] for instance.
and while I was expecting some kind of small randomness on the results, sometimes the suggested assets wher quite... surprising :P

Reply
redonihunter267 days ago

Really? How do assets be named then? Games have names like Resident Evil, or Backpack Hero. Baba Is You. Minecraft. Baldur's Gate.

Is it something like Zerin's fantastic Sword pack, or The 7 Swords of Pixelglow, to cobble up some fictious sword assets.

Or is ist something like Lowpoly modular dungeon : The Cave. That is not a name. It is like old Romans naming their kids Primus, Secundus, Tertius. Or a more recent fictional example, Seven of Nine. That one became a name, but it did not start as one.

But yeah, there seems to be much confusion about the search box. What it does and what it does not.

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ZerinLABS267 days ago

Yes, at the end, I guess that's the issue... the searchbar use is somehow not intuitive or confusing  (no offense).

BTW,  following your example and question: "The Cave" is the name of the asset while the "Lowpoly modular dungeon" is the descriptive prefix that we're adding for user awareness.

However, something on the lines of "Zerin's fantastic Sword pack" it wouldn't be such a crazy naming neither. :)

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redonihunter267 days ago
"The Cave" is the name of the asset

I think you would approve how Columbo named his dog. 

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ZerinLABS266 days ago(+1)

You should admit it gives less room for missinterpretations ðŸ˜Ž

Reply
redonihunter266 days ago

Depends. How big is the cave. *ba dum tish*

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