Steam search results mostly have nothing to do with what I searched.

[Vendrick]

Is there a way to restrict my results to show only games whose titles contain the words I've entered in? Like in google, I can just put words in quotes and it forces the results to contain those words

Like I just searched "Tales of", and got 2800 something results, and the actual tales games are scattered among them. It returned Microsoft Flight Simulator as a result even. There has to be a way to narrow down search results, right?

[Jerry]

Yeah, Steam has a tendency to give search results more depending on popularity than on how well the title matches the searched term.

Searching for a game like Z can be a pain.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/275530/Z/

And if the game title is part of some other game title (looking for the removed game "Reed" gives you the whole Assassins Creed catalogue instead) or sufficiently generic ("Experience"), you can really only go for a manual adress search.

I've mentioned the issue a few years ago, without much luck.

[crunchyfrog]

Pretty much no, becuase it really doesn't quite work like that sadly.

The point is that there are many metrcis to make up searches and they are pretty fluid too as they alter based on your history and searches and sales and so on.

It's meant to be this way to generate sales. Not saying it's the best (far from it) but it does trip up a lot of people.

[Vendrick]

Wow, that's super disappointing to hear. You'd think they'd generate more sales by letting people find the things they are already interested in buying, rather than flooding the search results with stuff they have no interest in.

Thanks for letting me know though.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Vendrick:

Wow, that's super disappointing to hear. You'd think they'd generate more sales by letting people find the things they are already interested in buying, rather than flooding the search results with stuff they have no interest in.

Thanks for letting me know though.

Erm no, it doesn't work like that.

It DOES give you results you're interested in - that's the point. But it does depend on how you search, what you search and so on.

you get a common funny complaint on here occasionally where people say things like "why am I getting recommended loads of trash hentai games in my searches as I don't want to buy them"?

Because you searched for them and the algorithm learned that i s the answer.

SO maybe start searching things a little more frugally I guess because for me I was away from Steam for a few years and returned just over a year ago or so. When I returned there were some differences to get used to and obviously the algorithm had bugger all data from me to work on.

It took a grand total of a couple of weeks for things to get where results made good sense. So it can work.

[Vendrick]

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Originally posted by Vendrick:

Wow, that's super disappointing to hear. You'd think they'd generate more sales by letting people find the things they are already interested in buying, rather than flooding the search results with stuff they have no interest in.

Thanks for letting me know though.

Erm no, it doesn't work like that.

It DOES give you results you're interested in - that's the point. But it does depend on how you search, what you search and so on.

you get a common funny complaint on here occasionally where people say things like "why am I getting recommended loads of trash hentai games in my searches as I don't want to buy them"?

Because you searched for them and the algorithm learned that i s the answer.

SO maybe start searching things a little more frugally I guess because for me I was away from Steam for a few years and returned just over a year ago or so. When I returned there were some differences to get used to and obviously the algorithm had bugger all data from me to work on.

It took a grand total of a couple of weeks for things to get where results made good sense. So it can work.

I very rarely even use the search, I mostly browse the new or top stuff in the categories I'm interested in. I can't imagine I've ever shown interest in anything that would lead steam to believe I would be interested in Flight Simulator, Call of Duty, or many of the other random results I get. Those are literally the last games I would show interest in. I play almost exclusively RPGs. Could it be that I've bought humble bundles or other things that come packed with random garbage I only bought to get a good deal on something I actually like? Is there a way to clear what steam "thinks" I like?

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Vendrick:

Originally posted by crunchyfrog:

Erm no, it doesn't work like that.

It DOES give you results you're interested in - that's the point. But it does depend on how you search, what you search and so on.

you get a common funny complaint on here occasionally where people say things like "why am I getting recommended loads of trash hentai games in my searches as I don't want to buy them"?

Because you searched for them and the algorithm learned that i s the answer.

SO maybe start searching things a little more frugally I guess because for me I was away from Steam for a few years and returned just over a year ago or so. When I returned there were some differences to get used to and obviously the algorithm had bugger all data from me to work on.

It took a grand total of a couple of weeks for things to get where results made good sense. So it can work.

I very rarely even use the search, I mostly browse the new or top stuff in the categories I'm interested in. I can't imagine I've ever shown interest in anything that would lead steam to believe I would be interested in Flight Simulator, Call of Duty, or many of the other random results I get. Those are literally the last games I would show interest in. I play almost exclusively RPGs. Could it be that I've bought humble bundles or other things that come packed with random garbage I only bought to get a good deal on something I actually like? Is there a way to clear what steam "thinks" I like?

Yeah well that's the thing - you're looking at this wrong.

Steam's algorithms don't read minds.

They ONLY casn tell anything based on what you view, and how that relates to how OTHER people view similar games and then kind of amalgamte the two.

Many people make this mistake thinking that because YOU know what you like, and what you think one game is closely realted to another game, then that also applies to here. It doesn't.

People's pigeon holing is usually arbitray at the best of times, so you can NEVER EVER get anywhere close to how you think this will go. That's just reality when you have large volumes of people.

And again, the key here is not to be exclusive, but inclusive - they're wanting to sell games, not make strict pigeon holing.

Once you realise thsi, you can tailor your results better and if that's you wanting better results you can adpat your searches and experiment a bit.

[Vendrick]

I'm all for steam trying to guess what I like and showing me results based off of that, but when I search for something specific, I feel like they are screwing themselves over by not giving me the most relevant results first, right at the top of the list, with their "suggestions" following. I could see someone not super familiar with steam searching for a game by name, it not showing up at the top of the list, and rather than searching through thousands of results that nowhere near come close to matching the original search, assuming "Oh, well I guess it's not on steam." and buying the game elsewhere.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Vendrick:

I'm all for steam trying to guess what I like and showing me results based off of that, but when I search for something specific, I feel like they are screwing themselves over by not giving me the most relevant results first, right at the top of the list, with their "suggestions" following. I could see someone not super familiar with steam searching for a game by name, it not showing up at the top of the list, and rather than searching through thousands of results that nowhere near come close to matching the original search, assuming "Oh, well I guess it's not on steam." and buying the game elsewhere.

That's because what YOU determine as the best results cannot be known or assessed by any algorithm. That's the problem.

Games are difficult to pigeon hole and even then their genres aren't mutually exclusive. Then you add the fact that what YOU termas similar to another game, the next person doesn't agree.

So you need to remember the results more speak to a whole rather than personally.

[Vendrick]

The best results can absolutely be known. The best results are the results of what you search for. The "suggested" stuff can't absolutely be known, and that's fine. But it should be a no brainer to return the results of what has been searched before any random suggestions, rather than mixing them all together. The best results will always be results that contain the searched words in the title, followed by tags, followed by suggestions. I can't imagine any scenario where someone searches for a specific game and is pleased with the seemingly random results that have nothing to do with their search.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Vendrick:

The best results can absolutely be known. The best results are the results of what you search for. The "suggested" stuff can't absolutely be known, and that's fine. But it should be a no brainer to return the results of what has been searched before any random suggestions, rather than mixing them all together. The best results will always be results that contain the searched words in the title, followed by tags, followed by suggestions. I can't imagine any scenario where someone searches for a specific game and is pleased with the seemingly random results that have nothing to do with their search.

Well here's the thing. How do you know they're random when you don't know what metrics might be being used to link them?

You got any examples of this?

[Vendrick]

The #1 thing that I can think of is Flight Simulator. I can't imagine having ever showed interest in anything that would lead steam to believe suggesting Flight Simulator would make any sense. Unless it's such a vague connection as having played a game with a plane in it or something, but if that is the case, then they can find a reason to suggest almost anything to anyone. Which I feel like would at that point be pretty random.

[crunchyfrog]

Originally posted by Vendrick:

The #1 thing that I can think of is Flight Simulator. I can't imagine having ever showed interest in anything that would lead steam to believe suggesting Flight Simulator would make any sense. Unless it's such a vague connection as having played a game with a plane in it or something, but if that is the case, then they can find a reason to suggest almost anything to anyone. Which I feel like would at that point be pretty random.

You need to show more than this. Flight Simulator under WHAT search?

[ulia]

@steam "Tales of"

in a google search.

[Vendrick]

Originally posted by ulia:

@steam "Tales of"

in a google search.

This is the way. Good call.