The web has grown so large that many things have been given more importance than other lesser ones.
And those lesser ones, include comments made on platforms. Traditionally, posts are given their own URLs, with their own significance, whereas comments that follow the posts, are only byproducts.
While that may be true to some extent, sometimes, it's actually those comments that made the posts popular in the first place.
Reddit that claims to be the "front page of the internet," has been the destination for many people who wish to engage in discussions about almost any topic imaginable.
But in turn, the vastness of Reddit has made it almost impossible to search for specific comments.
This is changing.
This is because Reddit announced that it has made a few updates to its search system, aimed at making it easier for Redditors to find exactly what they are looking for.
Through the update, the search functionality has been updated to be able to find posts, communities, and people, as well as comments.
Users can also further refine their searches by searching for comments within specific communities.
"With this new capability, users looking for particular discussions or comments on Reddit no longer need to click on several posts and then scroll through what can sometimes be thousands of comments to find threads that are relevant to them," Reddit said.
According to the platform, this was one of the most requested features by users based on a 2021 survey.
Reddit initially tested the broadened search functionality with a small group of users who had been invited to try it out.
"In our limited initial testing, we saw that more than 26,000 redditors used comment search to scan through over five billion comments," Reddit added.
Based on users' feedback, Reddit prioritizes posts over other content types.
In addition to the updated search functionality, Reddit also tweaked its search system.
"Improving relevance in search has been another core area of focus."
The updated search design also simplified the results page so users can more easily skim through the results and find what they’re looking for.
And to make Reddit search experience better, Reddit focused on:
- Allowing for less restrictive matching: Reddit tweaked its search system so it will process queries that don't have the exact text match. By doing this, Reddit saw "a 60% increase in results for queries that previously didn’t receive results."
- Using user patterns to improve results: Reddit has a better understanding of user intentions when they search for something on Reddit. In an example, if one user searches for a topic that a lot of other people are searching for, Reddit can automatically sort their results to prioritize the newest content.
- Incorporating signals for post results: This enhancement looks at users’ clicks and interactions on search results as a ‘signal’ of what might be valuable for them.
This feature, along with the other updates, can be accessed by heading to the home feed, clicking within the search bar, and conducting a search.
“With this latest update, for the first time in sixteen years everything on Reddit is now searchable – users, posts, communities, and now comments – making Reddit one of the first platforms with this capability,” Reddit said in a blog post.
On top of the search functionality enhancement and tweak, Reddit has "also been hard at work creating a new look for the search results page on desktop and mobile."