Hello!

This is an update on the Search Team's progress on its quarterly goals in Q2 FY 2016-17 (Oct - Nov 2016).

Our first goal was "Enable the backend for cross-project searching from Wikipedias to their sister projects". This goal was completed. This does not affect users yet; this goal was for defining and testing the backend, which will be used for upcoming UI tests.

Our second goal was "Enrich the data stored in ElasticSearch to allow targeted improvements to result relevance". This goal was completed, however it was not done for spaceless languages such as Chinese and Japanese for technical reasons. This fixes miscellaneous relevance issues, such as a query's match to page titles not being taken in to account as much as it should.

In Q3, the Search Team will have three goals:

Add real-time index updates to completion suggester and improve overall stability and performance of search by upgrading to Elasticsearch 5
Improve support for different languages by researching and deploying new language analysers
Prototype and test overhaul UI of search page to add cross-wiki searching

As you can see, we're still working on the key results of these goals, but the overarching goals themselves are finalised.

Thanks! If you have any questions, please let me know.

Dan

Dan Garry

Lead Product Manager, Discovery

Wikimedia Foundation