[Freebase-discuss] Problem with Suggest in web client

[Andi Vajda]

On Thu, 1 Jul 2010, Thad Guidry wrote:

> Recently with the web client search box, I have noticed that if I backspace
> and remove the last letter of a topic or subject that I'm searching for,
> then I'll get a match showing the drop down list.
> Example: 
> 
> Richard A. Englander
> 
> If I remove the last letter "r" from Englander then the drop down list
> includes this person.
> If I add the last letter "r" then he will not show up in the drop down list.
> Which seems odd.
> 
> I've played with with a bit with several topics and they seem to exhibit
> this weird behavior, especially in isolated cases where there is no similar
> topic.
> If I go back and forth with backspacing and adding the last character then
> the topic appears or disappears in the drop down list.
> 
> What's going on ?  Is this a possible artifact of the newly implemented
> Stemmed search feature ?

First thing to try is to cut the UI out and run the same query against the 
search api. The freebase.com homepage searches typically turn into:

http://api.freebase.com/api/service/search?query=text&prefixed=true&indent=1&limit=10

where text is the string you've typed in.

Andi..