next »

[kassyopeia]

Q: How come these two searches yield different sets of results?

https://audiobookbay.lu/?s=susanna+clarke (currently 5 hits)
https://audiobookbay.lu/?s=clarke+susanna (currently 2 hits)

A: It very much looks to me like the search string is interpreted as a sequence of search terms where the title is concerned, but as an exact phrase where the description is concerned. Thus, |clarke susanna| matches "Susanna Clarke" in the title but not in the description, which is where it occurs for the three shares only the oppositely-ordered search string yields.

I'm now going to see whether further experiments support or reject that hypothesis!

[kassyopeia]

YES! I'm reasonably certain my hypothesis is true, based on these tests:

https://audiobookbay.lu/?s=mists+avalon yields 4 hits, all of which have "Mists of Avalon" in the title. By contrast, https://audiobookbay.lu/?s=mists+of+avalon yields 9 hits, the 4 above plus 5 which mention "Mists of Avalon" in the description

https://audiobookbay.lu/?s=rivers+aaronovitch yields 5 hits, missing one instalment of Ben Aaronovitch's "Rivers of London" series, "Whispers Under Ground", altogether. However, at least one of the shares for the latter does mention the series name in the description, https://audiobookbay.lu/audio-books/whispers-under-ground-2011-ben-aaronovitch/ . And the description is definitely getting searched, as the success of a search for the tagline, https://audiobookbay.lu/?s=a+whole+new+reason+to+mind+the+gap , demonstrates.

https://audiobookbay.lu/?s=scarlet+study yields 4 hits, all of which have the two terms in their titles. I'm too lazy to try and count the number of "Sherlock Holmes" collections which include "Study in Scarlet" in their descriptions somewhere, because the point is pretty much made by now.

So, we're dealing with a hybrid terms-in-title/phrase-in-description search engine. Very unconventional, as far as I'm aware, but it explains a LOT, and is likely going to prove quite useful, once one learns how to use that quirk as a feature!

[kassyopeia]

Yep, as I thought, this oddity does have its uses, once one is aware of it!

Just now, I was for instance searching for "The Quantum Rose" by Catherine Asaro.

By switching the term order, I can do a narrow search which will find only torrents whose title directly includes the terms "quantum" and "rose" in whatever permutation. Which will also find any torrents whose descriptions include the exact phrase "rose quantum", of course, but chances are there aren't any of those.

https://audiobookbay.lu/?s=rose+quantum -> 1 hit

Or, I can do a wider search which will find the torrents above plus any whose descriptions include the exact phrase "quantum rose", which will likely be related to my target in some way.

https://audiobookbay.lu/?s=quantum+rose -> 5 hits

Two of the new hits are relevant, being series and author packs which include the target. The two others are not, as they only mention the target in passing.

In this case, the ideal number of hits would be 3, right in the middle of what the two searches yield, so which one is considered "better" remains a matter of opinion. In other cases, though, the narrow search may already be too wide, or the wide one still too narrow, and then it very much pays off to know which is which, so as not to miss any relevant or have to grind one's way through innumerable irrelevant results.

Still strange, though!

[Gweilo]

Thus, |clarke susanna| matches "Susanna Clarke" in the title but not in the description,

Actually sensible, since some might put the author as "Clarke, Susanna".

Anyway, I don't depend on clever syntax, as uploaders often are inconsistent.
I search for words likely to be unique, or at least less common than "Clarke"
Also I would not be sure that either "Clarke" "Susanna" was spelled correctly by all uploaders, myself.

Since you were apparently looking for "Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell" I'd just search for
https://audiobookbay.lu/?s=Norrell
which has the 3 copies of the book, and 2 which compare their book with it.

Winnowing by eye from 5 to 3 is fine. Also you might find something of interest if the title you want is mentioned.

[kassyopeia]

Also I would not be sure that either "Clarke" "Susanna" was spelled correctly by all uploaders, myself.

Yes, that's something I too always have in the back of my mind. I much prefer searching for dictionary words than for names, so a title like this one, consisting of literally nothing but names, is a little daunting in the first place.

[kassyopeia]

Searching only titles for a single word

We've seen how to do what more or less equates to a title search using multiple terms: deliberately change the order of the terms to one that is unlikely to randomly occur in a description.

However, if you only have one search term, that clearly doesn't apply. So, can this quirk be used in some other way to avoid lots of unwanted results? Yes, it can. Say you're looking for a book, and all you remember is that the title contains the word "omission" (somewhat contrived, I know, but it'll do for illustration purposes). First, the obvious approach:

https://audiobookbay.lu/?s=omission

This yields 18 results, 15 of which turn out to be mismatches which use "omission" (or variants thereof, like "omissions", plus more than one variant on the misspelled "comission", and so on) in their descriptions. Not ideal.

To more or less force the engine to concentrate on titles only, what we can do is split the target term into two substrings, like so:

https://audiobookbay.lu/?s=omis+sion

This yields just 4 results, reducing the number of mismatches from 15 to 1. And that one is just a case of bad luck, as "Thinking like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making" just so happens to also include both of those strings. This search would of course also find anything that includes the exact phrase "omis sion" in the description, but, as one would expect, there aren't any such.

An alternate strategy is to look for just one substring, bracketed with spaces:

https://audiobookbay.lu/?s=+omissio+

In this case, that works even better - no more mismatches. Again, this would find anything that includes the exact phrase " omissio " in the description, but as long as the substring isn't a dictionary word, that's unlikely to prove to be a problem in practice.

[kassyopeia]

Searching "omis sion" (= title-searching "omission", more or less) in all categories except LGBT, using the search box:

https://audiobookbay.lu/?s=omis+sion&ec=20404

Searching same in LGBT only, by manually adding the search parameter to the corresponding category listing from the sidebar:

https://audiobookbay.lu/audio-books/type/lgbt/?s=omis+sion

Is there a way to do the latter without direct URL manipulation?