New A/B test for sister project search results - Discovery

17 Mar 2017

Hello,

tl;dr - we’re running a second test for displaying sister projects in the
search results (with new link highlights) on 8 wikis for a week; starting
today, with apologies for sending to multiple email lists.

As a follow up to a recent A/B test
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T149806> that the Discovery Search
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery/Search> team conducted,
we’ll be running a second test <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T160004> for
displaying sister project search results in a sidebar on several wiki’s
search engine results page (SERP) - starting today. You can read the draft
report
<https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_Test_Of_Cross-wiki_Search_-_Helping_Users_Discover_Content_On_Wikipedia%E2%80%99s_Sister_Projects.pdf>
or browse the next two paragraphs for the biggest concerns.

We realized that when we display the results from the sister projects, it
might not have been intuitive to our visitors that there were links that
could be clicked to go to individual articles and to additional search
results, so, we’ve added blue links
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T158935> to the results.

We also discovered that the smaller wikis in which we had originally chosen
to test on, might not have had enough relevant results in their sister
projects to be displayed. To remedy that, we reached out
<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T158935> to the community and added 4
larger wikis along with the original 4 wikis, to test on. The list is as
follows: Persian, Italian, Catalan, Polish, Russian, French, German, and
Arabic.

Here are a few links that will not affect our testing, but will demonstrate
the new test display:

   - cawiki: https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=
   manifestaci%C3%B3&fulltext=1&cirrusUserTesting=recall_
   sidebar_results&searchToken=66xv5qgi97musdtybgwik11sk#manifestaci%C3%B3

<https://ca.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=manifestaci%C3%B3&fulltext=1&cirrusUserTesting=recall_sidebar_results&searchToken=66xv5qgi97musdtybgwik11sk#manifestaci%C3%B3>
   - dewiki: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=
   regenbogen&fulltext=1&cirrusUserTesting=recall_
   sidebar_results&searchToken=44wgqit3kykji2o1cxtaxlzcs#regenbogen

<https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=regenbogen&fulltext=1&cirrusUserTesting=recall_sidebar_results&searchToken=44wgqit3kykji2o1cxtaxlzcs#regenbogen>
   - arwiki: https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%D9%82%
   D9%88%D8%B3+%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B7%D8%B1&fulltext=1&
   cirrusUserTesting=recall_sidebar_results&searchToken=
   bxfe1fnvj7sav1nue56hpjt69#%D9%82%D9%88%D8%B3%2B%D8%A7%D9%84%
   D9%85%D8%B7%D8%B1

<https://ar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%D9%82%D9%88%D8%B3+%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B7%D8%B1&fulltext=1&cirrusUserTesting=recall_sidebar_results&searchToken=bxfe1fnvj7sav1nue56hpjt69#%D9%82%D9%88%D8%B3%2B%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%85%D8%B7%D8%B1>

You can edit the url to change the search term and also change to a
different Wikipedia. For example, try this url for “apple pie” on enwiki:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=apple+pie&fulltext=…
cirrusUserTesting=recall_sidebar_results&searchToken=
8mavijx36f9cl26l6k2v2o11l#apple%2Bpie

Let us know what you think!

Cheers from the Discovery Search Team
--
deb tankersley
irc: debt
Product Manager, Discovery
Wikimedia Foundation