We Upgraded Our Site’s Search Bar
At last week’s Winter Meetings, we redesigned our search bar functionality, and we are launching it today. The search bar location and the main function haven’t changed. The search bar is in the same place, and by default has the most-viewed players. It allows you to search players and blog articles. We did a pretty significant under-the-hood update that returns more relevant results, and while we were at it, we made some interface updates.
If you are interested in the details:
- Players results are weighted by a combination of name match and the number of recent views.
- Active players are in bold. The partial match of a search term is also underlined the player’s name.
- Articles can be searched in a separate window. They are weighted by term matching, number of views, and recency.
- For now, we’ve only included main page articles, not articles from all of our the blogs. The other blogs will be added in the future.
- We included Team Pages in the results!
- The search is also available as a full page: fangraphs.com/tools/search
I build things here.
Thank you Kanye, very cool!
Nice upgrade! Will Smith, the minor league catcher in LA’s system, he actually pops up on a search!
Was there a problem with Wills? Because it was also weirdly difficult to search for Will Clark too.
Will Clark was the first one I checked. 🙂 Works now!
Will Craig (Pirates MiLB 1B) was impossible to search for at one time
That’s fantastic news. He was so good in I Am Legend.
On my limited IE browser at work (v 11.1506) I don’t see the new search bar at all, and can’t seem to click on it either.
This is a problem for me too. Looking at it right now it’s just black, there’s no box at all.
Don’t use IE 11, if you must use a Microsoft browser use Edge. IE 11 isn’t updated any more (expect with security patches) and you are bound to have issues on many sites.
Well, at work I don’t get to choose a whole lot of my internet viewing options. Edge at work is a buggy mess that won’t re-size properly and freezes constantly. IE 11 Seems to be working now though.
I added some polyfills for IE. It should be working now. (Along with some other site features.) IE will still probably not perform as well a current browser, but the search should work.
Thanks for being responsive Sean, your solution worked for me!
Awesome change. Especially the ability to search easily through articles. So much quality content from the past can now be much more easily plundered. This is a feature I had asked for/suggested in the past so I’m really happy to see it.
Meeting of the McNeil minds this Thursday at Dunkin donuts
Whew, awesome.
Can’t tell you how frustrating it was to try and find old prospect lists from even 2016 in the search bar for a team. It was easier just to Google it.
Hi, how do I look up old episodes of Effectively Wild? I used to type in an episode number and the result would pop up. I’m sorry if I’m missing something obvious (which I probably am)!
You have to click “View All Results and Search Blog” to search the blog posts and use the full interface. This is a constraint we had because it’s primarily a player search bar and we can’t fit a useful amount of blog entries in the drop down.
Love being able to search articles.
Although rare, I would like to see a better way to differentiate between players with the same name. For example, there are currently two active Jose Ramirez.
Ha, every time I check in on my keeper league prospect, Pedro Gonzalez, I first have to click on the guy who’s two years younger than the Rangers’ one. I’m subconsciously forcing myself to keep hanging on.
Hah, I just figured out the player page color coding!
Hey, something weird has happened that’s breaking the post comment function. When I hit “enter” in both Firefox and Chrome and I have a cursor in the box, it takes me to another page, it looks like a random one from the most-searched players. What’s going on? I thought it was just Firefox but now it’s happening in Chrome too.
Thanks for letting me know! This should be fixed. Pressing enter should only affect the search bar if the cursor is in the box or the drop down is open.
No offense to Jose Ramirez – pitcher, but it wouldn’t bother me if he were to sign in Japan.
Jorge Posada’s bummed that his name won’t be at the top again
Haha! First thing I checked also. I think as an easter egg to the fangraphs faithful Posada should always be weighted above the others if the search term matches his name.
When I look up J.D. Martinez it doesn’t send me to J.D. Martin. I… I don’t know what to do.
*30 seconds later*
Whoa. Turns out J.D. Martinez is really f’n good. Huh.
I don’t play around with the search bar that often, but I find the results it’s spitting out to be kind of odd.
I type in “domin” and the top result is… Mike Minor?
“Neifi” gets me… Jeff McNeil?
Ichiro finds… Richie Ashburn?
Trout… Marcus Stroman and Troy Tulowitzki?
Thanks! As a long term project, I think it would be awesome to add searchable draft history, especially if it could be used to parse specific minor league/MLB seasons out of a given draft, and not just a cumulative career stat line.
But even just starting with draft history and links to player pages would be a cool, more bite sized thinger.
Interesting that Tulo does not look active. Probably doesn’t see 2018 results and assumes non-active. Maybe along with most recent season you could use team affiliation or contract end date as a secondary check for active?
I’m sure this is a boon to many folks. But the only enhancement I hope for is to make the stats search engine half as robust as the B-R Play Index. Among the many issues: Viewing search results 50 lines at a time just doesn’t cut it for research, nor does the inability to swipe-copy *only* the results table. And exporting to a file is a poor workaround.
Good stuff! Definitely worth the bargain annual membership cost!
Are there glitches with it right now? Or maybe it’s because I’m at work. I’ve tried Edge and Chrome.
I hover over the search bar, and see the most common names (Matt Harvey is first). I’m trying to search for Mike Moustakas. I type in Mike, and it underlines ‘Mike’ in ‘Mike Trout’, but all of the other names are unchanged.
Then I search for Moustakas, and nothing happens – it still shows Matt Harvey first, Daniel Descalso second, etc.
I click on ‘View All Results’ and it takes me to a bigger pop-up of the search bar. I type in Moustakas, and nothing happens. I hit Enter, and it takes me to the main page.
It should be working. It sounds like there might be a connection issue with our search service. Does your work block any domains or sites?
There must be something going on with my work network. I tried when I got home yesterday, and it worked fine. This morning at work, it does the same thing. So it’s an issue on my end, not yours.
This is fantastic! Great work devs!
Enhancement idea: I’d love to be able to press ‘return’ / ‘enter’ to be navigated to the first result. This would streamline user experience now that the first result is ideally the most relevant.
Just a heads up – in the search bar, for minor league players, there appears to be something wrong with using ‘1’ for the day in the player’s DOB. I saw an October 32nd earlier for a Nov. 1 DOB as an example. Casey Hudspeth will show you Sept 31 for an Oct 1 DOB. It still shows correctly on the player pages but not in the search bar.
Is it possible to search team wins 2013-2018? Thanks