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Multi-term searches non functional

1475384668

Edited 1475384711
Hi, I'm having a very odd problem where multi-term searches for tokens or other items do not function.  For example, a search for the item "red dragon" returns zero results (aside from premium content).  This is consistent with multiple simple 2 word search terms I have tried (like throne room, stone tile, metal door, etc).  It is a consistent problem across all search options (tokens, maps and tiles, and "everything").  I can search for single term items (e.g. "Dragon", "Floor", "Stone") but this is very inefficient.  I believe it is possible the multiple term search problem may be extending into single term searches as well search realms.  For example, a search for the term "Dragon" returns no Roll20 results under the "everything" tab, but does return Roll20 results on the "token" tab (see attached screenshots).  However, multi-term searches are broken regardless of which tab is used for me. I have tried multiple ways to fix this problem without effect.  I have duplicated the problem on Mac and PC, on Chrome and Firefox, and even on an entirely new account I created just for the purposes of testing after restarting my computer and clearing cached files and cookies.  I'm not sure why this problem has occurred.  I have 7mb out of the 100 allowed for our library in uploaded files, so I am nowhere near my data cap.  If you could help me solve this problem I would greatly appreciate it.  It would certainly help make my map design and campaigning much easier.  Let me know if there are tests you would like me to run or more information you need to solve this. Thanks!
1475536403
Stephen Koontz
Forum Champion
Marketplace Creator
Sheet Author
API Scripter
Compendium Curator
There definitely should be premium asset results showing up for "water way or swamp". Can you please follow Steps 1-3 of our Solving Technical Issues wiki page, taking special care to temporarily disable all browser add-ons and extensions, temporarily pause your anti-virus, and try switching browsers (for Chrome/Firefox specific issues) to see if one of those components is causing the problem. If all of that fails, please follow Step 4 , including providing all of the necessary information, so that we can further assist you.
I see the same issue.  Multi term searches such as "black stone" or "black tile" no longer find any non-premium assets when I'm positive I have searched for the same terms in the past and found many.  Even searching under the Everything category isn't returning any results.  I began to see this behavior about a week ago.  I have never had any issues finding results for common terms before. [Repro Steps] 1) Open the map editor. 2) Go to the art library tab. 3) Choose the "Maps, Tiles, Textures" category. 4) Search for two reasonable words (e.g. "black stone," "red stone," "stone tile," "wooden door" etc.) [Actual] No non-premium results, occasionally with a small number of premium results. [Expected] A significant number of non-premium results. Web Browser: Google Chrome version 53.0.2785.143 OS: Windows 10 version 14393.222 Javascript and cookies are enabled No antivirus software No browser extensions (I normally use them but found no change in behavior when I disabled them.)
Multiple search terms hasn't worked for a while. It really limits the ability to find specific images for tokens.
1476125188
Gold
Forum Champion
I have the same issue and tested yesterday.  Searching for "pumpkin" works, but searching for "pumpkin spice" finds nothing From The Web. Yes, we need a pumpkin spice image for October gaming.
I'm relieved to know I'm not the only one experiencing this.  I'm surprised more people weren't pointing out that multiple term searches (even using the instructions exactly as written) don't work.  It really sucks that all multi-term searches are so totally broken, though.  Searching "Star Wars" shouldn't return zero results, you know.  I've transitioned to mostly using 3rd party tokens and map components since it's so hard to find specific things since the search broke and just uploading them to my library.  Hopefully they'll fix this problem soon-ish.
1476981404
Gid
Roll20 Team
After doing some digging, this is what's the cause of this issue: Back in the early days of Roll20, Google's search engine API was free and readily available to be used. This was utilized for our web search for the Art Library. At the time, Google had claimed that this would be a freely available asset for a long time. As you can probably guess where this story is going, they decided later to lock their API behind a very significant price tag. Nowadays, when someone runs searches in the art library, it's using search results that we scraped back when we still had the API available. Those search results are tied to the keywords that were searched with at the time. This list of compiled searches are nearly four years old now, and limited to the keywords that were utilized by a fraction of the userbase that we have now. Ideally, we would find another search engine API to utilize, but so far we haven't found one that is financially feasible to license.
Ah, that makes sense. Thanks for clarifying. I was wondering why a number of the tokens and maps, etc, from "online" seemed to be older as well. This would certainly explain that. You guys might want to consider changing the instructions in search parameters in that case, since "searching with more than one keyword " or using the "or" search function seems to remove almost all results. Thank you for the explanation.
That's unfortunate to hear, but thank you for looking into it.  Is there any feasible workaround at the user level?
1477000323
Gold
Forum Champion
Tom L. said: That's unfortunate to hear, but thank you for looking into it.  Is there any feasible workaround at the user level? Use google outside tabletop, save image, upload image (using account quota).