Search doesn't work on mobile devices

elmani

Hi all. I'm a massive fan of Smugmug. I've been on the platform for a few years and have spent many... many hours developing my personal photo website which has thousands of photos and which is regularly accessed by friends and family across the world. But I've found a technical problem and raised it over a year ago with the Smugmug team who are basically ignoring it and saying they are too busy to fix it. I really love the platform, so I'm hoping that raising this in a public forum may give the team more incentive to fix it!!

In early 2017 I spent many hours running my images through facial recognition software and then adding the information to Smugmug as keywords. It works fantastically when using a desktop computer. But it doesn't work properly on mobile devices, either not returning any results, or only returning a small subset. Initially the Smugmug team weren't able to replicate but eventually they were able to.

Has anyone else had a similar problem?

Thanks and fingers crossed for a solution.
Adam

leftquark

Hi Adam,
Would you mind clarifying what you mean when you say it doesnt’ work properly on mobile devices or doesn’t return the full set of results? Where are you performing the search? Could you give some example keywords that work on desktop but not on mobile? Searching via the /search page on your site should return the same results regardless of what platform you perform the search on.

Also, this is the first I’m hearing of this issue so I’m a little surprised to hear your history with the issue. I say that in the sense that the answer you received doesn’t sound very heroic; that’s not the kind of service we want to give. If you can give me a few examples I’ll dive into this and get you a better answer.

One last thing, within the last few weeks we’ve completely updated the behind-the-scenes for how our search results work. Are you still seeing the behavior recently?

leftquark

(I found the tickets for your email chain with the heroes. I’m diving in some more, though some example keywords would still help here)

elmani

Really appreciate the quick response. I've attached an example. I searched for the new Paul. On the desktop the site finds 77 images and displays them. On the mobile site it says it finds zero images although it then displays 10 images. In terms of other keywords, you can try (Adam, Natalie, Norman, Amanda, Daniel) Let me know if I can provide any additional information.

leftquark

Just wanted to keep you upraised: I'm having trouble recreating it on my own site and also with your images. When I search in multiple iOS devices and on multiple Android devices, I get 77 images returned every time. I see this is happening on an iOS device for you, so I'm going to continue investigating. The Heroes and the QA team pointed me to their own investigation and they believe they were able to reproduce it -- I just need to dive in further.

leftquark

Hi Paul,
I'm still having trouble recreating this issue. Would you mind giving me some more details on the steps that you take to produce it? Does it happen every time? Only certain times? If you refresh the page, does it fix itself? Are you on WiFi or your data plan?

The way I'm attempting is to:
1. Open Chrome on my Android device or Safari on my iOS Device, or open Chrome or Safari on a computer
2. Navigate to www.elmani.com
3. Wait for the homepage to load and then tap on "Search"
4. Scroll down and type in "Paul" into the search box and hit enter to search
5. Notice that it says 77 images.
6. Scroll all the way down to the end, then scroll all the way back. 77 images still displayed.

I've tried in Chrome for Android (Google Pixel), Safari and Chrome on an iPhone X, Chrome for Android (on a different Google Pixel) and Chrome/Safari on an iPhone 7+. Our QA team believes they had been able to recreate it but I'm still looking for help narrowing the steps that cause the issue.

elmani

Apologies for the delay in responding, I've been travelling. Attached are some examples. I am using an Iphone with the latest IOS. Names searched for were David, Mia and Richard

elmani

Sorry, just add a bit more information ( to fully answer your questions). 1) What steps am I taking: Exactly the same as you've outlined, 2) Does it happen everytime: No.. it's very random, 3) Does it resolve with a refresh: Yes - it appears it does, 4) Data or WIFI: Problem is happening on both. Thanks and look forward to hearing from you

leftquark

Just wanted to keep you upraised: It's being really pesky. I managed to recreate the issue once but all future testing, especially when connected to a computer for debugging, cannot reproduce the issue. We'll keep digging but the randomness of it is making it hard to debug at the moment.

elmani

Thanks Aaron, appreciate your updates and really appreciate that this is now being properly looked at. Let me know if there is any other information I can provide to help resolve. Adam

leftquark

More updates: With the Flickr acquisition and some new european regulations, the team has been distracted from looking into this. I'll set a reminder for myself to come back to this in the next few weeks once those things die down and I can grab some engineering eyes to figure out what's going on. A "bump" on this thread won't hurt either (yes, I'm giving you permission to bug me until I tell you to stop :P)

elmani

Hi Aaron, it's been 3 weeks so please consider this a friendly bump!! Thanks Adam

leftquark

Thanks for the bump. Still nothing to report but we haven't forgotten!

elmani

Hi Aaron, another 2 weeks have passed... So another friendly bump... Thanks.

elmani

Hi Aaron, can I please bump again. I appreciate there is lots going on at your end, but it's been two months since my original post (and over a year since I originally highlighted the issue). Thanks Adam

leftquark

I've got a reminder set on my computer every Monday to bug me about this, so I won't be forgetting. It's just taking some time to get some eyes on it since it's been very difficult to reproduce reliably (though we have reproduced it, so we know you're not imagining things!)

elmani

Thanks for the update Aaron - hope for a solution soon! Just noticed another related issue. On desktop, if I search for events using "Ollie's", I get the result I expect, if I do the same on mobile, I get nothing... Thanks

leftquark

I know this isn't specific to your situation but we just launched search in our iOS app (it's been available on Android for a while) and it shouldn't have this issue.

elmani

Thanks Aaron. But any update on a resolution to my actual problem, appreciate you guys are busy but it's been ages now?!?

leftquark

We're a pretty small team and the process is spend a majority (but not all) of our attention on product improvements, while reserving some smaller time for closing bugs and issues. We try to prioritize the bugs impacting a larger group of customers first, and since this one has been particularly difficult to reproduce, and doesn't appear to be impacting a large # of customers, it's priority hasn't bubbled up to the point where we can tackle it yet. I would love to get this one fixed for you, and I have a weekly reminder every Monday to check on the priority of this one, so I'm not forgetting.

elmani

Bump Bump Bump!
Hi Aaron. Any update on this issue. It's nearly 2 years since I originally raised it and there has been zero progress. I appreciate you're a small team, but surely fixing the most basic of functionality (search!) for long term loyal customers has to be a priority> I feel I've been extremely patient, but I think you have to agree it's getting a bit ridiculous. Can you please allocate some resource to this rather than spend time on functionality for new customers or for new acquisitions. Thanks in advance. Adam

(NB: For anyone just reading this without knowing the history, to save you time reading all of the previous messages, in summary the search functionality on mobile isn't correctly working - I've provided lots of evidence and SmugMug have been able to replicate the issue)..

leftquark

To be honest, I don't expect us to get to fixing this in the near future. The main reason is that we want to nuke the entire search results page after getting lots of feedback on the user experience. We'll definitely make sure this bug doesn't come back when we rebuild it to work much better!

elmani

Aaron. Any update on this. As a reminder, it's been nearly 2 years and the search functionality on mobile still isn't working correctly.!??!!!??!?

elmani

Raising this up again. Aaron - any update??
As a reminder (to save everyone reading the history). Search is not properly working on mobile - it often doesn't return the full results OR it does show the results, but claims to have found nothing. I've raised this for over 2 years and SmugMug have been able to replicate the issue - but clearly aren't prepared to spend the time to fix it. Search is one of the most basic of functions and fixing issues for current (and long time) customers should be a priority. Excuse the rant, but hope you can understand why..

leftquark

Thanks for your patience @elmani. There's a few quick reasons why we haven't taken the time to fix this. We'll get to it but it's not going to be soon.

The "0 images" issue is a superficial one -- while it's embarrassing, it's not stopping you or your visitors from finding the photos they're looking for. As a result we've chosen to stay focused on issues that either block people from getting to their outcome, or working on some of the many things we'd like to build into the product.

The bigger issue is the one of search results not showing up, and that's the one I'd want to tackle before the "0 images" issue. There's been a few reasons for not fixing this and the first is that the usage of the search page, especially on mobile, is quite low. It's a function of people either hiding search from their page or more importantly, that viewers use the keyword links to find photos of the phrases that they would have otherwise searched for. Lastly, as we've put more work into our iOS and Android apps, we're seeing a lot of SmugMug owners point their visitors to the SmugMug app which has a much better browsing experience than within Chrome or Safari on the phone (and doesn't have any of these Search issues).

I have a grander vision of completely redoing the search page so that it's easier to take actions on the search results (for example: if you wanted to buy or download multiple photos from within the results). The issues you outlined here would get squashed at that time. But there's a few other things I'd like to build for all of you before we get to the search pages.

elmani

As ever, I appreciate the response - although not the detail of the response.

Firstly, to clarify the issue of showing ‘0’ but displaying results - in this scenario it only shows around 8 images and not the full set of results, so visitors can not find the images they are searching for. It is therefore not superficial.

As for the issue not being fixed soon - I’ve waited over 2 years already!! I appreciate that search on phones may not be used significantly by others, but why should I suffer. I pay to use your service (which I love!) and this is a basic functionality that you offer as part of your service (that I pay for) - usage levels should be irrelevant.

I know you’ve got lots of exciting things happening at Smugmug - but please do free up someone’s time to fix this issue.....

elmani

Resurfacing this issue as it's now almost 3 years since I originally raised it and still no resolution. As a reminder, this is an issue with the most basic of functions - search!! It works perfectly on desktop, but on mobile there are regular issues with the results showing images but saying zero have been found AND only a selection of images being shown instead of all the images @leftquark can I please get an update and can you please get some focus on this!!!

elmani

Example https://us.v-cdn.net/6029383/uploads/editor/9x/wbdxxzeqm918.png

elmani

Appreciate that you're busy but would really appreciate a response @leftquark or anyone else at Smugmug.

leftquark

It's still on my radar but I'm trying to also be honest and say that this is low on our priority list. There will be a time in the future when we want to help your photos be found and be inspired by each other, which will completely rewrite the search features.

I'm less concerned with the "0 photos" issue and more that only a subset of the photos are displayed. If we were to pull in fixing this, that'd be the first issue we'd fix.

elmani

Thanks for the update @leftquark, but you'll forgive me if I say it's a pretty awful response. As you know. I love Smugmug... but search is the MOST BASIC of functionality and I honestly don't understand how this cannot be a priority to fix.