Scribd API search showing irrelevant answers

Question

When I use the search functionality on the scribd docs API to search for a function, like http://api.scribd.com/api?method=docs.search&api_key=API_KEY&query=hello+world It returns irrelevant results, and ones different to the search functionality of the site. This request, for example, returns results about Guitar Hero, World of Warcraft and Virtual Worlds etc. Whereas the site search on https://www.scribd.com/search-documents?query=hello+world gives documents titled "Hello World" as you would expect. Is there a parameter that I can add to the api call that will make it return relevant results?

Answer 1

You may try playing with the simple parameter to see if it makes any difference to your queries. According to the API reference (half of it is inaccessible at the moment) it makes the results the same as for the website:

(optional)This option specifies whether or not to allow advanced search queries (more information). When set to false, the API search behaves the same as the search on Scribd.com. When set to true, the API search allows advanced queries that contain filters such as title:"A Tale of Two Cities". Set to "true" by default.

I tried your query myself, but it still doesn't give adequate results, even though it changes things a bit. But it is still not good enough regardless of the simple option being set to false. Even if you try to run their sample queries 1:1 they are still giving 90% irrelevant results.

Then I found a similar issue being discussed in the following google group thread back in 2011. At the end Jared Friedman (the CTO of Scribd) himself admits that API search and website Search work differently and it is not in their priorities to fix this. In 2014 another developer complained. Seems to me that four years later this is still the case.

I'd suggest contacting Scribd support directly and asking them what is the current status of the docs.search API and if there is some preliminary approval process in place (for example, they may do a background check on accounts and only then provide relevant results, otherwise they return just test results for any query) although I doubt it.