announcement

[Update] Upcoming changes to the Related topics widget

Update: changes mentioned in this topic are live





We're working on improvements for the related topics widget (finally). As you've pointed out earlier here, here and to a certain extend here the related topics widget can use some improvements.





We'll change the datapoint that is currently providing recommended topics to the same datapoint that we use for our live-search engine. The goal is to make the related topics suggestions more accurate and relevant to the topic. Another benefit is that these improvements will decrease load time (and therefore increase performance) on your platform.





One of the consequences for switching data points is that we can no longer show a relative timestamp below the topic title. Instead we will show the category to which the topic was posted to provide more context about the topic.





Other suggestions for improvements such as manually recommending topics or only listing topics between a specific time range are not included. Our priority is to make Related topics results more accurate.





These improvements will be automatically rolled out to your platform in the upcoming weeks. We'll let you know when it's there.
Thanks for picking this issue up!





My understanding is that the new "related topics" widget will use the same logic / datapoint as the current live-search engine. Can you give us a list of all factors that are taken into account when it comes to sort the relevance?





You also say that "other suggestions for improvements [...] are not included". But in our opinion this contradicts the following sentence that your "priority is to make Related topics results more accurate". Because we think that factors like date, number of helpful votes, number of clicks, number of comments and/or the subforum are also relevant to determine a better list of results.





We're happy to provide more detailed feedback and are also happy to support you regarding testing and improving the widget, because for us the "Related topics" widget (if done right) is an important function to lower the bounce rate and increase activity, as well as giving users a quick glimpse into the depth of our content.
Hey,





The changes mentioned above are now in effect.





Can you give us a list of all factors that are taken into account when it comes to sort the relevance?



The following factors are taken into account: Searchable attributes (= which attributes do we search for) and Ranking formula (= how hits are sorted)





Searchable attributes (ordered by importance)




  • Title

  • First post

  • Answer

  • Reply

  • Tags

  • Category

  • Category group



Ranking formula




  • Number of words from the query that match,

  • Typos

  • Position of the matching words

  • Was the topic solved (y/n)

  • When was the topic last updated

  • Number of likes

  • Views

  • Replies



You also say that "other suggestions for improvements [...] are not included".



In this case I was referring to the suggestions manually recommending topics and only listing topics between a specific time range should appear. We agree that the factors mentioned by you are important to determine a better list of results. As you can see in the lists above a lot of the attributes are taken into account. Recently we added the 'Helpfulness score' attribute to our search engine, when we have sufficient data we can start including this attribute in the ranking formula as well. Topics with a higher helpfulness score will appear higher/first in list of results 🙂
Thanks for paying attention to this feature @Yoeri





First off, just a nitpicking thing: can you add some more space between the title 'Related topics' and the related topics?





Secondly: I'd prefer it if new features would be announced and activated on staging by default, so that we can have a week or 2 to test and get used to them before general rollout. Anyone with me?





Third: it would be nice to measure performance improvements after rollout of these features, in this case when it comes to customers finding an answer. I'd suggest using A/B-testing for this.
Secondly: I'd prefer it if new features would be announced and activated on staging by default, so that we can have a week or 2 to test and get used to them before general rollout. Anyone with me?


Yes. A 100%.





Third: it would be nice to measure performance improvements after rollout of these features, in this case when it comes to customers finding an answer. I'd suggest using A/B-testing for this.



Yes. A 100%.





I also submitted a ticket:


The field that is shown below the title is the name of the category the topic’s subforum belongs to. I think it would be far better to show the subforum's name itself (and also link to it) as this is far more relevant information.
Thanks for the feedback.


We're going to add some more whitespace between the title 'Related topics' and the list of topics below. We will also change the Category to the Subforum, we agree this makes more sense.





I'd prefer it if new features would be announced and activated on staging by default, so that we can have a week or 2 to test and get used to them before general rollout






We'll take this into account for future releases.





I'd suggest using A/B-testing for this.






Keen to hear your ideas on this, can you elaborate this? 🙂



I also submitted a ticket


The field that is shown below the title is the name of the category the topic’s subforum belongs to. I think it would be far better to show the subforum's name itself (and also link to it) as this is far more relevant information.





I agree on this 100 %.
We deployed some improvements to the related topics widget:




  • Added whitespace between 'Related topics' title and the list of topics

  • Display the subforum a topics belongs to (not the category)

  • Made the subforum a link



Thanks for your feedback!



I'd suggest using A/B-testing for this.
Keen to hear your ideas on this, can you elaborate this? :)





I'm elaborating here 🙂
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