[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #46763: Improve plugin search results with already active plugins

[WordPress Trac]

#46763: Improve plugin search results with already active plugins
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 Reporter:  joostdevalk  |       Owner:  (none)
     Type:  enhancement  |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal       |   Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Plugins      |     Version:
 Severity:  normal       |  Resolution:
 Keywords:               |     Focuses:  ui, administration
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Comment (by gibrown):

 > The ultimate solve here is NOT "let bigger monolithic plugins rank
 higher" but "highlight for people what the plugins they're ALREADY USING
 can do."

 I like it when I agree with @Ipstenu. The user has already decided on a
 set of plugins. Let's not second guess that decision, let's use it. We
 should boost up (or just run a second search query across only the
 installed plugins) and display any already installed plugins.

 Install count, reviews, support threads all matter a lot for the search
 ranking alg. But once a user has installed a plugin they have presumably
 already taken those into account. (I feel some desire to go on a rant that
 there is no such thing as "organic search results", but I will try to
 refrain.) Once the user has decided to install a plugin, that information
 seems way more important than any usage info that wp.org has knowledge of.

 I don't like only boosting the plugins that appear in the first page of
 results, because what if the user has a plugin installed that is on the
 second or third page? Do we display them only when the user goes to the
 next page? Do we not show them differently at all? I think this gets
 complicated, and also, because the search alg uses things like install
 count it will definitely favor the big plugins.

 I don't love the idea of a completely separate section of search results,
 but maybe we limit it to the top 3 and can have a button for expanding to
 show more if there are more.

 I do think we should also show highlights of why a result matched on the
 search screen, but after thinking about it some more, that should probably
 be another ticket and involve a complete redesign of the search interface.
 Probably also better to do that on wp.org first.

 Unfortunately, there is some performance downside with putting these
 filters/boosting on the search queries. It will mean fewer cache hits on
 wp.org and more having to make the extra hop to Elasticsearch. I'm not
 sure if there is a way around that or how much slower it will make things.
 I know anywhere not in N America is already pretty slow, so the added
 marginal delay is probably minor in comparison.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/46763#comment:20>
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