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Mar 31, 2015 11:09 AM CST
Garden.org Admin
Name: Dave Whitinger
Southlake, Texas (Zone 8a)
Region: Texas Seed Starter Vegetable Grower Tomato Heads Vermiculture Garden Research Contributor
Million Pollinator Garden Challenge Charter ATP Member I was one of the first 300 contributors to the plant database! Garden Ideas: Master Level Region: Ukraine Garden Sages
On a recent trip out of town, I was at a nursery and was frustrated that many of my plant searches were not giving me the results I expected. So I've been working for several days on a new search engine for our database and I'm pretty excited about it, and would love it if some of ya'll would give it a try and see what you think.

The original (and still active) search engine is here:

http://garden.org/plants/searc...

And the new one to beta test is here:

http://garden.org/plants/searc...

Try searching for stuff and see what you find. Compare the same search in the old and the new engine and see the difference. My hope is that the new engine will produce much closer matches to what you're looking for.

For example, if you search for "watermelon" it's likely that you want the fruit. Well, the old search shows you a million other plants that have watermelon somewhere in their name (Peperomia, Nemesia, etc.) The new one shows you a nice long list of watermelons. The goal is for the system to try to better anticipate what you're looking for and give you better guesses. The old way is simply looking at the words and giving back the closest matches without thought to how valuable each plant might be.

I'm not going to get into the details of how the new engine was programmed right now, but I'm definitely wanting some feedback on whether this is looking better or worse than the old original search.
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Mar 31, 2015 11:36 AM CST
Name: Jennifer
48036 MI (Zone 6b)
Cottage Gardener Houseplants Spiders! Heucheras Frogs and Toads Dahlias
Hummingbirder Sedums Winter Sowing Peonies Region: Michigan Celebrating Gardening: 2015
I'm excited about this! But I'll have to try it later tonight.
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Mar 31, 2015 11:39 AM CST
Garden.org Admin
Name: Dave Whitinger
Southlake, Texas (Zone 8a)
Region: Texas Seed Starter Vegetable Grower Tomato Heads Vermiculture Garden Research Contributor
Million Pollinator Garden Challenge Charter ATP Member I was one of the first 300 contributors to the plant database! Garden Ideas: Master Level Region: Ukraine Garden Sages
Check this out. Search for "sedum" and compare the two results:

Old:
http://garden.org/plants/searc...

New:
http://garden.org/plants/searc...
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Mar 31, 2015 11:46 AM CST
Name: Danita
GA (Zone 7b)
Charter ATP Member Forum moderator Hummingbirder Salvias Butterflies Birds
Plant Identifier Vegetable Grower Container Gardener Seed Starter Cat Lover Region: Georgia
Sounds like a good idea. Smiling

However, my first search for "Fern Rita's Gold" in the beta search returned only "No plants were found for your search."
In the old search, I got the proper result:
Golden Boston Fern (Nephrolepis exaltata 'Aurea')

Then I searched for this plant,
Sage (Salvia Mystic Spires)
under "Salvia Playin' The Blues", "Salvia Balsalmisp", and "Salvia Mystic Spires" and I only got the result of "No plants were found for your search" for all queries. The old search returned the proper result each time. Shrug!
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Mar 31, 2015 11:51 AM CST
Garden.org Admin
Name: Dave Whitinger
Southlake, Texas (Zone 8a)
Region: Texas Seed Starter Vegetable Grower Tomato Heads Vermiculture Garden Research Contributor
Million Pollinator Garden Challenge Charter ATP Member I was one of the first 300 contributors to the plant database! Garden Ideas: Master Level Region: Ukraine Garden Sages
Could you give me a direct link to the actual search query that you performed?
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Mar 31, 2015 11:52 AM CST
Garden.org Admin
Name: Dave Whitinger
Southlake, Texas (Zone 8a)
Region: Texas Seed Starter Vegetable Grower Tomato Heads Vermiculture Garden Research Contributor
Million Pollinator Garden Challenge Charter ATP Member I was one of the first 300 contributors to the plant database! Garden Ideas: Master Level Region: Ukraine Garden Sages
Never mind, I found and updated the engine. It now finds it.

Any future reports would be better if it included a link to the URL of your search.

http://garden.org/plants/searc...
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Mar 31, 2015 1:15 PM CST
Name: Jay
Nederland, Texas (Zone 9a)
Region: Texas Region: Gulf Coast Charter ATP Member I helped beta test the first seed swap I helped plan and beta test the plant database. I was one of the first 300 contributors to the plant database!
Celebrating Gardening: 2015 Plant Identifier Tip Photographer Garden Sages Garden Ideas: Master Level Hibiscus
When I search species or specific cultivar I get identical results, but when I search genus they are different. I really like the look of the beta results. The original is cluttered with comments, new photos, etc., but the beta give a nice clean list of species and cultivars. When I search for plants I am usually looking for that plant, not recents photos and comments. I give the new search Thumbs up Thumbs up
wildflowersoftexas.com



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Mar 31, 2015 1:32 PM CST
Name: Danita
GA (Zone 7b)
Charter ATP Member Forum moderator Hummingbirder Salvias Butterflies Birds
Plant Identifier Vegetable Grower Container Gardener Seed Starter Cat Lover Region: Georgia
Wouldn't you know that the first two plants I tried searching would be problematic. I guess I attract chaos. Rolling my eyes. Hilarious!
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Mar 31, 2015 1:34 PM CST
central Illinois
Charter ATP Member I was one of the first 300 contributors to the plant database! Hosted a Not-A-Raffle-Raffle Million Pollinator Garden Challenge Plant Identifier Garden Ideas: Level 2
Celebrating Gardening: 2015 Avid Green Pages Reviewer Photo Contest Winner: 2014 Photo Contest Winner: 2017
Search - trumpet daffodil

http://garden.org/plants/searc...
old search yielded 25 pages

http://garden.org/plants/searc...
new search got only 10 pages
Nothing that's been done can ever be changed.
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Mar 31, 2015 2:24 PM CST
Garden.org Admin
Name: Dave Whitinger
Southlake, Texas (Zone 8a)
Region: Texas Seed Starter Vegetable Grower Tomato Heads Vermiculture Garden Research Contributor
Million Pollinator Garden Challenge Charter ATP Member I was one of the first 300 contributors to the plant database! Garden Ideas: Master Level Region: Ukraine Garden Sages
The new search is indeed producing less results but I can easily adjust that to show more.
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Mar 31, 2015 3:56 PM CST
Name: Vickie
southern Indiana (Zone 6b)
Bee Lover Garden Photography Celebrating Gardening: 2015 Daylilies Plant Lover: Loves 'em all! Region: United States of America
Region: Indiana Garden Art Annuals Clematis Cottage Gardener Garden Ideas: Level 2
Did a search for Ed Brown (the daylily). This is the one I was having trouble with because "Ed" was less than three letters.

Ed Brown-Old search gave me three pages, with Ed Brown midway on the first page.
http://garden.org/plants/searc...

Ed Brown-beta search - very first at the top of the list and only one page.
http://garden.org/plants/searc...


Also searched for the word "Mary's" (as in Hemerocallis Mary's Gold).

Old search- three pages and Mary's Gold was mid-way on the first page again.
http://garden.org/plants/searc...

Beta search-with such a vague search, maybe it was luck that Mary's Gold came to the top of the search list!
http://garden.org/plants/searc...

From what I can tell, I like it a lot better! Thanks, Dave I tip my hat to you.
May all your weeds be wildflowers. ~Author Unknown
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Mar 31, 2015 4:43 PM CST
Garden.org Admin
Name: Dave Whitinger
Southlake, Texas (Zone 8a)
Region: Texas Seed Starter Vegetable Grower Tomato Heads Vermiculture Garden Research Contributor
Million Pollinator Garden Challenge Charter ATP Member I was one of the first 300 contributors to the plant database! Garden Ideas: Master Level Region: Ukraine Garden Sages
Not luck but a good algorithm. Smiling

And look at this:

http://garden.org/plants/searc...

2 letter words are supported in my new search!!!
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Mar 31, 2015 5:16 PM CST
Plants Admin Emeritus
Name: Evan
Pioneer Valley south, MA, USA (Zone 6a)
Charter ATP Member Aroids Irises I was one of the first 300 contributors to the plant database! Tropicals Vermiculture
Foliage Fan Bulbs Hummingbirder Lover of wildlife (Black bear badge) Composter Plant Identifier
Sweeet!
ae ae
works flawlessly.
http://garden.org/plants/searc...
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Mar 31, 2015 6:21 PM CST
Plants Admin
Name: Zuzu
Northern California (Zone 9a)
Region: Ukraine Charter ATP Member Region: California Cat Lover Roses Clematis
Irises Celebrating Gardening: 2015 Plant Identifier Garden Sages Plant Database Moderator Garden Ideas: Master Level
I wanted to see whether it deals better with hyphens and looked for Ch-Ching, the rose. The rose was at the top of the list, but the second item on the list was Erigeron divergens, which doesn't have "ch" or "ching" associated with it in any way. Does the new search engine speak Chinese? Is this a translation? Hilarious!

http://garden.org/plants/searc...
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Mar 31, 2015 6:31 PM CST
Plants Admin
Name: Zuzu
Northern California (Zone 9a)
Region: Ukraine Charter ATP Member Region: California Cat Lover Roses Clematis
Irises Celebrating Gardening: 2015 Plant Identifier Garden Sages Plant Database Moderator Garden Ideas: Master Level
Never mind. *Blush* It's because several of the common names ("Branching Fleabane, etc.") have "ching" in them.
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Mar 31, 2015 6:58 PM CST
Garden.org Admin
Name: Dave Whitinger
Southlake, Texas (Zone 8a)
Region: Texas Seed Starter Vegetable Grower Tomato Heads Vermiculture Garden Research Contributor
Million Pollinator Garden Challenge Charter ATP Member I was one of the first 300 contributors to the plant database! Garden Ideas: Master Level Region: Ukraine Garden Sages
You figured it out. But "ching" is different from "ch-ching" and I don't know why my engine is matching words like "Branching" from a query of "ch-ching"; I'll be looking into this. Thumbs up
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Mar 31, 2015 6:59 PM CST
Garden.org Admin
Name: Dave Whitinger
Southlake, Texas (Zone 8a)
Region: Texas Seed Starter Vegetable Grower Tomato Heads Vermiculture Garden Research Contributor
Million Pollinator Garden Challenge Charter ATP Member I was one of the first 300 contributors to the plant database! Garden Ideas: Master Level Region: Ukraine Garden Sages
jmorth said:Search - trumpet daffodil

http://garden.org/plants/searc...
old search yielded 25 pages

http://garden.org/plants/searc...
new search got only 10 pages


I've increased the size of the search engine limits and the new one now gives even more results than the old one.
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Mar 31, 2015 7:02 PM CST
Garden.org Admin
Name: Dave Whitinger
Southlake, Texas (Zone 8a)
Region: Texas Seed Starter Vegetable Grower Tomato Heads Vermiculture Garden Research Contributor
Million Pollinator Garden Challenge Charter ATP Member I was one of the first 300 contributors to the plant database! Garden Ideas: Master Level Region: Ukraine Garden Sages
I just uploaded a new algorithm that should improve things a bit when you're searching for just a genus name.
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Mar 31, 2015 7:18 PM CST
Garden.org Admin
Name: Dave Whitinger
Southlake, Texas (Zone 8a)
Region: Texas Seed Starter Vegetable Grower Tomato Heads Vermiculture Garden Research Contributor
Million Pollinator Garden Challenge Charter ATP Member I was one of the first 300 contributors to the plant database! Garden Ideas: Master Level Region: Ukraine Garden Sages
Search for "Solanum" and you'll see it offers links on the right side to all the custom databases in that genus. Moreover, in the results it shows a pretty powerfully ranked selection of popular tomato plants.

http://garden.org/plants/searc...

Similarly, search for "Abelia" and the first result is Edward Goucher followed by Kalaidoscope. These are, of course, the two most likely abelias the common gardener would be looking for.

http://garden.org/plants/searc...

Another example is Echinacea. Note that the popular ones appear at the top. At the bottom is the plants that nobody grows.

http://garden.org/plants/searc...

Contrast that with the old (current) search engine:

http://garden.org/plants/searc...

Note that the third result is a species plant that has zero images, zero comments and doesn't even have any data fields. It shouldn't be so prominent!

I'm feeling pretty good about my beta search and I think I'll launch it tomorrow.
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Mar 31, 2015 7:30 PM CST
Plants Admin
Name: Zuzu
Northern California (Zone 9a)
Region: Ukraine Charter ATP Member Region: California Cat Lover Roses Clematis
Irises Celebrating Gardening: 2015 Plant Identifier Garden Sages Plant Database Moderator Garden Ideas: Master Level
Was the old search engine giving the third echinacea result (the Berkheya species) pride of place because echinacea appears twice in the name? I can't think of any other logical reason. The entry hasn't been edited recently. In fact, it has never been edited.

I agree that you can launch the beta search right away. It seems to be a great improvement.

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