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It seems Opera has been a popular search for as long as I can remember in the Popular Searches pane of the side bar.



Are people still searching for Opera after all this time? Not that I mind, it was a great browser, but considering the the current version is much disliked among various former Opera users, while the old version is effectively a couple years old and in several ways outdated by this point (though there was a minor security update recently) it surprised me that it was still showing up among the top handful of popular search queries on the DB.

Edit: thinking about it, it may make more sense if the most popular are based on total number of searches since that would also include searches from years ago.

These "popular searches" look indeed outdated. In particular, "firefox" is still in the list while "chrome" isn't. I get that hardcore users of this site tend to dislike Chrome because of its high footprint and low configurability, but the majority of search volume comes from casual users (as shown by the popularity of "games" that probably doesn't give many relevant results - even "game" (singular) would be a better search). "Chrome" is likely a more popular search term than "firefox" at this point.

@Andrew, can you investigate?

I just checked, and they are current.

Initially I thought it was a feedback effect i.e. the links are there, so people click on them and it forms a positive feedback loop.

Then I realized that has already been taken care of. The "u=0" parameter in those links ensure that they do not count towards the stats. I even double-checked again to make sure there isn't a bug in the code.

So it's real. People are typing in "firefox", "torrent", "opera" etc. into the search box. You could argue maybe they are still affected by the display of popular search terms and typing those terms into the search box, rather than clicking on the links! But if that's really happening, there's nothing we can do about it.

Andrew Lee wrote:I just checked, and they are current.

Initially I thought it was a feedback effect i.e. the links are there, so people click on them and it forms a positive feedback loop.

Then I realized that has already been taken care of. The "u=0" parameter in those links ensure that they do not count towards the stats. I even double-checked again to make sure there isn't a bug in the code.

So it's real. People are typing in "firefox", "torrent", "opera" etc. into the search box. You could argue maybe they are still affected by the display of popular search terms and typing those terms into the search box, rather than clicking on the links! But if that's really happening, there's nothing we can do about it.

Okay. Thanks for investigating.

It's definitely surprising.

SYSTEM wrote:It's definitely surprising.

• Indeed.
  
  My only explanation is the accumulated totals are so unbalanced, their effect persists through time...

Could these stats be reset (on some intervals maybe)?

Could these stats be reset (on some intervals maybe)?

As an experiment, I compared the current top searches versus if I restricted the window to 1 day:

1-day	All-time
password firefox opera pdf torrent skype backup autohotkey gimp 7-zip	password pdf firefox torrent skype iso ccleaner opera games vlc

6/10 of the top searches are the same (bold).

Should we make the change?

Yes!

Can't we have both?

I will try out using 1-day window, and increasing the number of top searches to 15, just to spice things up a bit.

If it does not work out for whatever reason, we can always revert.

I was actually curious if it was possible to see the top 20 or 50 searches. Not a feature on the front page, just somewhere.

I was actually curious if it was possible to see the top 20 or 50 searches. Not a feature on the front page, just somewhere.

Maybe we can expand the front page panel to show top 20 searches? I will implement it and you can tell me how it looks.

A separate page could be created for top searches, but I just don't see a compelling need for it ATM.

Andrew Lee wrote:

I was actually curious if it was possible to see the top 20 or 50 searches. Not a feature on the front page, just somewhere.

Maybe we can expand the front page panel to show top 20 searches? I will implement it and you can tell me how it looks.

I'm actually pretty happy with what you have now. It gives me some idea of what to focus on without overwhelming.

Andrew Lee wrote:A separate page could be created for top searches, but I just don't see a compelling need for it ATM.

I'm just interested to see the list -- it doesn't need to be an ongoing site feature.

Here it is (top 50, most popular first):

password
pdf
skype
torrent
opera
firefox
iso
notepad
ccleaner
image
encryption
7-zip
autohotkey
backup
ftp
maxthon
mp3
vlc media player
games
cdex
context
filezilla
tree
utorrent
revo
youtube
avidemux
paint.net
code::blocks
open-xchange
autorun
faststone capture
portable
recovery
x-media
thunderbird
wiki
html-kit
pdf-xchange viewer
free free
autoit
blender
file recovery
menu
radio
registry
µtorrent
browser
calendar
driver

Are you still sure it was good idea?