Search functionality improvements

My two largest positions are SE and MELI. I was under the impression these had not yet been added to Freetrade and I had regularly been searching for them to move these positions onto Freetrade.

Every time I searched for MELI this came up (see first screenshot) but when I search for MEL (see second screenshot) it actually returns the stock in question.

@Viktor is there any reason why this search functionality returns such strange results?

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Whereasā€¦ with SEA the output seems reversedā€¦

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Why not use the actual company name instead of tickers? I think that this makes much more sense given the freetrade audience. Canā€™t see a real issue here!?

Even company names donā€™t work properly. If you search ā€œIntelā€ it is like bottom of suggestions.

I can see someone else has already beaten me to it but Intel was also going to be my exampleā€¦

Tickers are unique so that seems to me the most logical search option.

You also canā€™t even use this forum as a source of truth as the threads are not updated as companies are added.

The first search almost looks like itā€™s assuming you made a spelling mistake as it looks like itā€™s searching for ā€˜mediā€™ instead of ā€˜meliā€™ (note it appears to be searching the company ā€˜tagā€™ lines as well.

The second search shows that tag line search, as it looks like itā€™s searching every piece of text for ā€˜seaā€™ then ordering results by company name

(E.g ā€˜seaā€™ ā†’ Seattle bookshop)

Itā€™s really strange, and clearly you should be able to search by ticker. And results should return at least by company name and ticker first.

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That is exactly what I thought but it did seem strange as a rule given ā€˜lā€™ and ā€˜dā€™ are not near each other on the keyboard.

I looked at the Apple text rules, I appreciate these are a source of truth but the whole western world has helped build them, and it does not correct ā€˜meliā€™ to ā€˜mediā€™.

Surely if a four letter search matches a ticker then that should be the top result with the others following it.

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MercadoLibre is in the search results, but itā€™s 39th out of 61 results. I can understand why itā€™s sorted by name though. Sorting by relevance is hard and they still have a lot of development to do.

Very likely. It also returns Chipotle which has ā€˜Mexicanā€™ in the long description.
Also Akamai for which I cannot see anything resembling ā€˜meliā€™ in any of its text.

The algorithm obviously searches for similar words in case of a mistype but it seems to go too far.

Yeah it seems like it just needs some refinement, itā€™s seems like the search algorithm and functionality isnā€™t tailored for stock type searches.

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I know it was in the search results but my guess would be if the average person types in the ticker and the company does not appear in the top searches they will likely assume it is not on Freetrade so not a great UX.

Iā€™m a Freetrade investor and long time user and I gave up, so Iā€™m sure others will too. It means that Freetrade has missed out on the FX of my position because I wonā€™t be moving it across now.

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I think something happened with search and it no longer works.

It chooses fuzzy matches over direct matches. Try looking for AVIVA ā€” no matter how many letters you type the result you are looking for is usually in the end of the list while indirect matches like ā€œaviationā€ are on top.

Saying that it is tailored to tickers is incorrect. If I type in AV (exact ticker for Aviva) I get NLY, AST, AGR and god knows what else.

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If that was in reference to my comment, I was meaning that whatever search algorithm theyā€™re using itā€™s clearly not tailored to stock based searching.

It does need fixed. Although if it needs fixed itā€™s a good time to improve search overall as itā€™s always been fairly simple (no filtering, no sort by type, no market based search etc)

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I think youā€™ve hit the nail on the head here with the refinements needed.

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Yep,
When I type in ā€œAvivā€ I expect first result to be Aviva, not ā€œAeroVironmentā€, followed by ā€œAvevaā€, followed by ā€œAVI Globalā€, followed by ā€œAvisā€ etc.

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Iā€™d guess thatā€™s because until this year there werenā€™t many stocks on the app. A search wouldnā€™t return enough results for any sorting to make a real difference so it wasnā€™t a priority.

As the number of available stocks increases a good search experience becomes ever more important.

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I have a strong suspicion that itā€™s the introduction of fuzzy search that spiced things up. Although itā€™s possible that it was always there in which case you are correct -)

Interesting, it was brought up here that the fuzzy matching includes key words so it finds all the ā€˜internetā€™ companies, then alphabetises them. Itā€™s not the most intuitive.

Maybe @simonpoole could help.

Iā€™m not too familiar with our search functionality myself, but Iā€™ll make sure this is raised for discussion :slight_smile:

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Prepending the ticker with a dollar sign for US stocks brings it up

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