Why Can't We Search Like We Do On Google?
I'm trying to find something on Logos and still finding it difficult. I've had the program about year and still find searching as not very intuitive. I'm so used to typing a line of text either using Google or Ask.com and finding an array of articles. Why can't this be done with Logos? Why isn't there a way to just type: "What was Jesus' mission to the Jews?" or something like that? I have to type something like "Jesus WITHIN 6 WORDS Jews" and even then it might or might not find anything relevant. Can someone explain to me how the Google search engine is different from Logos and why we can't do this kind of search?
Comments
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Gregory S. Waddell said:
Can someone explain to me how the Google search engine is different from Logos and why we can't do this kind of search?
Google spends millions of dollars on creating search algorithms.
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Gregory S. Waddell said:
Why isn't there a way to just type: "What was Jesus' mission to the Jews?" or something like that?
Searching for key words in a few fields in a Logos library can find resources:
Keep Smiling [:)]
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Gregory S. Waddell said:
I'm trying to find something on Logos and still finding it difficult. I've had the program about year and still find searching as not very intuitive. I'm so used to typing a line of text either using Google or Ask.com and finding an array of articles. Why can't this be done with Logos? Why isn't there a way to just type: "What was Jesus' mission to the Jews?" or something like that? I have to type something like "Jesus WITHIN 6 WORDS Jews" and even then it might or might not find anything relevant. Can someone explain to me how the Google search engine is different from Logos and why we can't do this kind of search?
Well, for one, Google's "library" is much bigger than yours. It's the whole internet, which means there's a good change it might find an exact match for what you typed. Most Logos users have several hundred to a couple thousand resources. Google has 50 billion web pages indexed.
Secondly, Google tracks which pages point to other pages via links, and they track what people click on after doing a search. They take that data and use it to rank the pages with more links and more clicks higher. Logos resources don't have as many links as webpages do, and Logos doesn't track your clicks, so Logos can't use that kind of data to rank the search results.
Thirdly, Google's indexing and query processing computers are much more powerful and expensive than a desktop computer, so they can build more complicated indexes that do things like index whole phrases and not just words like Logos does. Plus Google has a staff that is constantly fine tuning the indexes and the ranking algorithms.
Finally, keep in mind Logos can do searches that Google can't. You typed in one: "Jesus WITHIN 6 WORDS Jews", but other more complicated logic can be done on Logos. Plus Logos has morphology and syntax searches available too.
MacBook Pro (2019), ThinkPad E540
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Agree that Google has a complex set of algorithms that solve for search (200ish conditions, as I recall). However, you raise an interesting point; I know that Google sells its search engine to corporate customers (i.e., in their search appliance/etc). Perhaps Logos and Google could affilliate somehow to bring a similar result to Logos users--and ideally against the full Logos content, not just what one person owns. I'd then be able to see search returns with resource links where I owned content, and just text snippets where I didn't.
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Ward Walker said:
Agree that Google has a complex set of algorithms that solve for search (200ish conditions, as I recall). However, you raise an interesting point; I know that Google sells its search engine to corporate customers (i.e., in their search appliance/etc). Perhaps Logos and Google could affilliate somehow to bring a similar result to Logos users--and ideally against the full Logos content, not just what one person owns. I'd then be able to see search returns with resource links where I owned content, and just text snippets where I didn't.
I was thinking the same thing.
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Ward Walker said:
Perhaps Logos and Google could affilliate somehow to bring a similar result to Logos users--and ideally against the full Logos content, not just what one person owns. I'd then be able to see search returns with resource links where I owned content, and just text snippets where I didn't.
Unfortunately, the word probability tables both for individual words and word strings that are developed by Google (and shared at least within the Natural Language Processing community) would not fit the Logos resources very well - Scripture and theology isn't a big percentage of the web vocabulary. To create a tagged training set to develop the probability tables for Logo's vocabulary would be very expensive. Then there would be the little problem of not being able to easily fit the tables on a personal computer/electronic device. Searches would have to done online. It would be more appropriate to compare the Logos search to the Windows search.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Thanks Everyone,
I think I'm beginning to understand. It's complicated.
OK. I can understand that. Thanks for all your tips on searching.
I guess I've been spoiled by Google.
I agree about the morphology searches. That's powerful.
Thanks for your responses.
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I have found it odd that with all the thousands of dollars of software I have, often the best way to find a verse is to google it.
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Josh Hunt said:
I have found it odd that with all the thousands of dollars of software I have, often the best way to find a verse is to google it.
I admit, I have done that too. [:)]
Logos is a powerful software program… but it is not always a simple one. It takes some learning to make the most of it.
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alabama24 said:Josh Hunt said:
I have found it odd that with all the thousands of dollars of software I have, often the best way to find a verse is to google it.
I admit, I have done that too.
Logos is a powerful software program… but it is not always a simple one. It takes some learning to make the most of it.
Agreed
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Because we love Logos, there is a tendency on these forums to jump to Logos' defense at every criticism. It is like you have said my grandbaby is ugly. I love Logos, too. And I'll punch you in the nose if you call my grandbaby ugly - any of the eight of the beautiful darlings.
However, you are right, Grergory. Searching is not very intuitive with Logos, and it is the biggest weakness of the program. Logos' strength is the marvelous library of resources that it offers and the unique way the passage guide works. But searching on Logos is inferior. And that is surprising since that should be a basic function. It is worse on the ios apps.
Still, it can be done, and the other benefits of Logos make me love the program. I would not swap it for any of the competition that I have seen. But I hope that one day the searching will be fixed. With our Logos libraries numbering in the thousands of books, searching should be a top priority for Logos developers. Surely, someone is working on it.
"In all cases, the Church is to be judged by the Scripture, not the Scripture by the Church," John Wesley0 -
MJ. Smith said:Ward Walker said:
Perhaps Logos and Google could affilliate somehow to bring a similar result to Logos users--and ideally against the full Logos content, not just what one person owns. I'd then be able to see search returns with resource links where I owned content, and just text snippets where I didn't.
Unfortunately, the word probability tables both for individual words and word strings that are developed by Google (and shared at least within the Natural Language Processing community) would not fit the Logos resources very well - Scripture and theology isn't a big percentage of the web vocabulary. To create a tagged training set to develop the probability tables for Logo's vocabulary would be very expensive. Then there would be the little problem of not being able to easily fit the tables on a personal computer/electronic device. Searches would have to done online. It would be more appropriate to compare the Logos search to the Windows search.
But MJ, we are talking about a much smaller amout of material to search in a Logos library. Surely, it can be done, and done more intuitively. This is especially true with the basic searches.
"In all cases, the Church is to be judged by the Scripture, not the Scripture by the Church," John Wesley0 -
I absolutely love Logos. I think the search tool is very powerful and tremendously useful, though maybe not as flexible as it could be. There is always room to improve and usually some quick and dirty ways around it (esp since natural language search is so complicated and still rather in its infancy).
Here are a few suggestions I would make that would be relatively easy (as compared to NL search):
1. Have Logos gather information from (opt-in) users. Information that would be useful, for example, is: what resources are used and at what frequency (ranked usage), search queries that are made that return < n results. For search results that return < n results, analyze the queries and see if there are any special cases that can be detected and transformed into queries that produce the desired results.
2. More options to rank and categorize results. Eg. Rank "Library Results" by my most used resources, categorize by resource type (bibles first, then dicts, encyc, commentaries, monographs, etc)
3. Add another section after "Library Results" - if the user is online - that returns Google results.
4. Integrated Google search. Google does offer the ability to use it's engine to index your own data. I'm not sure about fees; they may be too expensive to absorb or reasonably pass on, but it would be worth checking. This also requires that the complete library is in a format or that Google Index has the ability to use custom filters so that it can access the data in the library in order to create a meaningful index. That may also involve licensing issues? So this option is definitely filled with a lot of ???
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Amen to that.
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This is a really interesting topic.
I would love to see example queries that you want to run in Logos but can't or don't get good results for.
At the fundamental level, we run the same kind of searching system that Google (and every other full-text search engine) uses. We find documents that best match a "bag of words" and try to intelligently rank the results.
Google has several other things going for it, though.
A) A lot of engineers.
They don't search on your machine, they search in the cloud, and can afford massive data centers which essentially keep the entire index of the Internet in memory. Our users want to run offline sometimes, and don't run personal clouds that can store everything in memory. (Google vs. Logos when you have no Internet: We win! Always better results. <smile>)C) They have some "natural language query" overlays that pre-process queries before trying the "bag of words" tricks. We don't, and don't believe they're yet appropriate to our types of content.
D) Google is indexing "everything in the world." Even with a "bag of words" query and no natural language parsing, having the whole Internet in the index increases the chance of good hits. Almost every query anyone has ever typed has a page where almost exactly the same phrase exists. Google's results are often horrible -- it's just that there's some result that looks perfect, and it shows up at the top. The horrible matches are on page 15 of your search results, which no one ever looks at.
E) Most of our users queries aren't "What was Jesus' mission to the Jews?" type queries. People who buy Logos are often searching for more specific things, like Bible references or more tightly formatted queries.
F) Again, because of the massive amount of indexed content, Google often looks like it is working well when it's not. Search Google for "John 1:2" and it appears to work, but it's finding textual matches. It returns 3 John 1:2 near the top. Logos finds references to John 1:2, ranks them high, and also finds and ranks highly significant references to John 1:1-11, or John 1:1-3. And never confuses it with anything in 3 John.
G) Google doesn't search morphological syntax. Though it might appear to -- it returns results on "imperatives in Ephesians 4" -- these aren't actually hits on that, but rather articles/pages that are headlined/contain "imperatives in Ephesians 4". Again, a big win when you have "all the data in the world," but not a useful way to find something specific in the text.
H) In Logos, you are searching known, trusted content. We could (with some money and time) search the Internet, too, but you have Google for that. If you want results from your library, we're ahead of Google -- and, I believe, close to as good as Google's engine could do with our library. To get "Google type results" you need the whole Internet, including the heretics, crazy papers, and random blogs, and spam.
I just searched
Jesus mission to the Jews
in Logos 4, with a < 3,000 book library. The first few hits were pretty good, and the fourth was specifically on that subject. Adding "what was" to the front reduces the hit quality, because we aren't trying to parse sentences, so it's looking for "what" and "was" in the results. We could (and have considered) just throwing out these types of "introductory words", but we don't think that's expected behavior in a tool like ours, which is used to return more precise hits for scholarship, research, etc. It fits on Google, where you never care about the overall precision / quality, just that something good shows up on the first page.
But we're open to improving, and want to, so please do list as many examples of "searches I want to do", and we'll see what we can do.
Thanks!
-- Bob
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And we are searching some resources that are simply junk in my eyes. Now, what is junk in my eyes is gold in someone else's eyes. And what they classify as junk is gold in my eyes.Bob Pritchett said:In Logos, you are searching known, trusted content.
What typically comes out in my searches tends to display what I think junk is first. How the results should be displayed IMHO needs to be based on our priority list resources (along with what resources that we use the most). The algorithm used now is simply worthless for me.
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tom collinge said:
And we are searching some resources that are simply junk in my eyes.Bob Pritchett said:In Logos, you are searching known, trusted content.
Bob, my complaint with the search is, like Tom's, the problem of the ranking of the results. Yes, by creating collections and reference ranges it is possible to get the Logos rankings to be reasonable. I suspect that providing some default collections and (more?) reference ranges would make it easier for the "average"" user to write searches that return the desired results on the top pages.
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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As is always the case, however, this is more of a peception problem than it is a technical problem. It is common for the development people to hear a complaint like this and say, "What! I don't know what you're talking about. It is soooo simple." Yes, for you. But for the non-technical user, the perception is that it's a lot less inuitive than Google. I suppose because Google has spoiled us.
I just did the search in Google and--out of the first 8 hits, 5 are totally relevant.
I did the same in Logos and got this:
On a busy day, of which most of us have many, I look at that and ask myself, how much time will it take to sift through all that information and answer my question. The answer is obvious, so I turn to Google.
Greg
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Don't know what happened to my screenshots.
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Gregory S. Waddell said:
Don't know what happened to my screenshots.
Hi Gregory
Did you use the paperclip icon?
Instructions are at the bottom of the article at http://wiki.logos.com/Screenshot
Graham
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Let me offer a concrete example of an area that has oftentimes left me wishing that Logos would improve it's searching results. I think it is something that should be relatively simple to implement as well.
Here are two pictures that demonstrate the problem. This first result is from a Personal Book which I have created of the Liturgy of the Hours. It is in Spanish, but notice the title of the search results. You don't need to know Spanish to notice that they aren't useful:
In this case, all these results come from the "Office of Readings" which is the heading one level under the title of the day or feast on which they occur. A simple change of displaying two levels of headings would all of a sudden give much more information to the user about where these results are coming from.
The same problem occurs with the Early Church Fathers collections. Here is a search from them:
Notice the same problem? The title indicates the Chapter or Homily number, which is the lowest heading for the Church Father's Collection. But within the Church Father's Collection, the Chapter isn't useful for figuring out where something comes from. On the right hand, it indicates the volume and the title of the work. Who is the author? No idea. This one's from a commentary on John... OK, there are probably 20 of those in the Church Father series.
In the case of this search, what would be most interesting would be to know the author and the name of the work. The chapter information is actually of secondary interest, but is given priority in the presentation.
Maybe a possible solution to this would be to make the Logos search system able to display a different heading level or levels based on the type of resource, not only in the little grey text, but also in the main result display. A simple solution for personal books would be to allow the user to decide the number of heading levels to display in the search results (maybe with maximum of 3). For example, in my first picture, if I could just display 2 heading levels instead of 1 I would have all the information I need to know where it came from. This info of course could already be included in the indexing Logos does, so it shouldn't negatively affect speed of search results.
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Searching for "Jesus mission to the Jews" on the Logos iPhone app came out as "An error occurred retrieving results."
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Benjamin Ho said:
Searching for "Jesus mission to the Jews" on the Logos iPhone app came out as "An error occurred retrieving results."
The servers are down. Since searches are performed online, you will receive this message for any search.
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tom collinge said:
And we are searching some resources that are simply junk in my eyes.Bob Pritchett said:In Logos, you are searching known, trusted content.
As a 'fake Catholic' with a mostly Evangelical library I couldn't agree more.
tom collinge said:How the results should be displayed IMHO needs to be based on our priority list resources (along with what resources that we use the most).
Don't forget Rating.
Fr Devin Roza said:The same problem occurs with the Early Church Fathers collections.
That one has annoyed me too many times! Can't be too hard to fix.
Bob Pritchett said:I would love to see example queries that you want to run in Logos but can't or don't get good results for.
I'll try to remember to take some screenshots in the future.
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Fr Devin Roza said:
A simple change of displaying two levels of headings would all of a sudden give much more information to the user about where these results are coming from.
yes please [Y]
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Another one Google won:
Don't take it too hard, Bob, we still remember who you are, even when your own forum doesn't.[:P]
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While I appreciate the whole topic about the searches being made both quicker and accurate on the local computer, I wonder why other options are not perused. "X1" is a very sophisticated search algorithm program that can find anything on my computer as fast as I type. If the search engine (algorithm) was improved either by subcontracting out, or work on improving it, I think it would drastically make the program better. (If you don't have X1, you might want to try it out - it's impressive)I have a new i7 computer trying to get results quickly only to find out that I can either Google my question and get a quicker answer, or physically get up and open the old fashioned books and find the answer. If searches are that slow (and that is one of the concerns raised) and too hard (the other concern) then this seems like an important area for the program to address.
I have stopped buying new books because of the speed issue (and the "no resale value" issue). The issue of speed has been a long problem of Logos and one I truly hope they will address.
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Todd Phillips said:
Secondly, Google tracks which pages point to other pages via links, and they track what people click on after doing a search. They take that data and use it to rank the pages with more links and more clicks higher. Logos resources don't have as many links as webpages do, and Logos doesn't track your clicks, so Logos can't use that kind of data to rank the search results.
It would be nice if Logos could implement something like this -- the more often you click on a resource the more favorable it becomes.
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Rick Tinsky said:
While I appreciate the whole topic about the searches being made both quicker and accurate on the local computer, I wonder why other options are not perused. "X1" is a very sophisticated search algorithm program that can find anything on my computer as fast as I type. If the search engine (algorithm) was improved either by subcontracting out, or work on improving it, I think it would drastically make the program better. (If you don't have X1, you might want to try it out - it's impressive)
I also use X1 and it is an amazing tool for searching my desktop and e-mail. It is probably my most-used tool. However, while it finds every instance where a word occurs at blazing speed, its ranking for the display of results is also not very good. I haven't tried Google Desktop Search yet though.
I have previously mentioned it in other threads on this forum: I often resort to Google's Internet search for finding information rather than Logos. Having said this, the search in Logos has improved and I have been pleasantly surprised recently.
Armin
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I know this sounds pretty crazy but I usually do my Bible searches outside of Logos if at all possible, using an inline text search combined with quick sub-searches. It's the latter that quickly get to what I'm looking for (essentially doing what google does automatically).
In Logos, the effort required is more significant and the results not easily viewable. Compare the Logos display to the google display. In Logos you have to click on each book to see the included results, where in google there's a heading plus short results.
Additionally since google searches are in a browser, you can do quick 'finds' where Logos forces squinting to trying to find the specific detail sought.
So, maybe the google intelligence is insurmountable, but Logos doesn't make it easy for the user either. Even the Logos search sort choices remain inscrutable.
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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[Y]DMB said:I know this sounds pretty crazy but I usually do my Bible searches outside of Logos if at all possible, using an inline text search combined with quick sub-searches. It's the latter that quickly get to what I'm looking for (essentially doing what google does automatically).
In Logos, the effort required is more significant and the results not easily viewable. Compare the Logos display to the google display. In Logos you have to click on each book to see the included results, where in google there's a heading plus short results.
Additionally since google searches are in a browser, you can do quick 'finds' where Logos forces squinting to trying to find the specific detail sought.
So, maybe the google intelligence is insurmountable, but Logos doesn't make it easy for the user either. Even the Logos search sort choices remain inscrutable.
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SteveF said:Armin said:
Google Desktop Search
Does this still exist?
I was under the impression the answer was "no" so have re-activated Windows Indexing in order to be able to do searchs of desktop, email etc.
You are right. I checked and Wikipedia states: "Google Desktop was discontinued entirely in September 2011."
DMB said:I know this sounds pretty crazy but I usually do my Bible searches outside of Logos if at all possible, using an inline text search combined with quick sub-searches. It's the latter that quickly get to what I'm looking for (essentially doing what google does automatically).
@DMB: I am curious. Can you explain this in more detail?
Armin
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Armin ... in-line text search is simply looking for a text string without regard to 'word' or lexeme/root etc. So for example 'John the', depending on the translation returns attributed John the Baptist. On the surface, this sounds too simplistic, but actually there's a whole science behind one language overloading another and using the first to find the second's nuance that's not immediately searchable (what amounts to searching a commentary).
I do this on my own Bible software which brings in the verse, to which I can then do a sub-search on the same panel for what may be nearby (without having to worry about Logos search parsing).
As I noted on another thread, in the sub-search I allow color coding and then selecting by color (similar to searching highlights, but here the highlights are added to search results).
Plus I also allow search result deletes (i.e. in the sub-search, deleting all results not a result of the sub-search ... to which further narrowing is easily available).
The same search engine also does similarly for non-Bible text files on my PC as well as my notes (about 70,000).
So my point above, is that Logos really hasn't done much more than increase the search speed with indices; the actual user time is still quite significant. But I DO use the Logos4 search for specific greek/hebrew combinations (so, I'm not saying Logos4 isn't needed).
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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Thanks so much, DMB, for the explanation. While this kind of search possibilities offered by Logos is certainly of tremendous help for Greek & Hebrew scholars, it just does not work for the "average" person like me. I don't search enough in Logos to remember the syntax and don't know original languages. To me, and probably most of the other "average" people, Google is just an amazing search engine.
Armin
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One practical issue for me has been running a search to do a lookup on a particular Source - text resource. I mean, wanting to see a passage in Sanhedrin in the Talmud or look up a quote in the DSS or Pseudepigrapha. It would be nice to have a section in the search categories that - by default - recognized words that are in the TOC of these different documents (or SHOULD be) and have them listed seperate from the main body of the search results. Not all references to these works are hyper-linked yet. [Though many are and there are more all the time
]At present, I have come up with a work-around. I made a NOTE file containing the TOC from the Jerusalem Talmud, Babylonian Talmud, Mishnah, DSS, Pseudepigrapha, LOJ_1, LOJ_2, Philo, Josephus, etc. I copied and pasted all the content of the TOC from each of these into a SEPARATE NOTE file. Now when I search it shows up under the MY CONTENT section of the Search results: I know them by the name I "tagged" them with: 01_TEXTS DSS, 01_TEXTS Josephus, 01_TEXTS Philo, 01_TEXTS Legends of the Jews, etc. This has been a help to me.
Example: I want to read about Melchizedek from the DSS. I run a search and there are alot of hits linking to books about Melchizedek in the DSS, but in the main search results ... nothing near the top that would take me to the source. BUT now, under MY CONTENT, I see: 01_TEXT DSS [The Heavenly Prince Melchizedek (11QMelch = 11Q13)] and click on it. Now I have the TOC which is hyper-linked to THAT section of the DSS. Voila!
I wish Logos had a category for TOC searching.
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Ron - please put this in the Suggestion forums and send to suggestion.logos.com This could be a very important feature - too bad I don't read Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, ... to use it.[:(]
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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Ron Corbett said:
I wish Logos had a category for TOC searching.
In order to appear in the TOC, the text has to be formatted with a heading style, so wouldn't a search in Large Text, Heading Text (instead of All Text) give you what you want?
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Melchizekek does indeed show up in the TOC titles as fgh indicates. So in that sense, there's an existing solution.
But the compromise is there's no in-text results. If in-text results are included, then the headings disappear (merge into all results) The first DSS Melchi is in a commented sentence using a ranked sort. If I remember right, Google lists major results first before 'tiny' results (essentially what Ron is forcing to happen).
"If myth is ideology in narrative form, then scholarship is myth with footnotes." B. Lincolm 1999.
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M.J. - just for the record, I am using the English text of these resources. [And if I could be sure that George wasn't listening in, I will admit to using ... inter-linears at times along with my extensive visual filters.]
fgh said:In order to appear in the TOC, the text has to be formatted with a heading style, so wouldn't a search in Large Text, Heading Text (instead of All Text) give you what you want?
Yes, it would, and as I used your suggestion on "Sanhedrin", the Talmudic reference came up 4th and 6th in the list. That's not too bad either. But I am, as DMB added, trying to "force" Logos to push these search results up front - and in a simple [Entire Library] search.
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Ron Corbett said:
as I used your suggestion on "Sanhedrin", the Talmudic reference came up 4th and 6th in the list
Using only Heading Text might push them even higher, and would be a more exact "TOC search", but some Logos resources don't use a heading style for subheadings, so you might end up losing more than you gained.
The search engine ought to weigh results according to where they are found: *1 for normal text, more for large text and heading text, less for footnotes.
DMB said:But the compromise is there's no in-text results.
You can always redo the search with All Text if you don't find what you want. For me, not having to wade through hundreds of completely unwanted results more than makes up for having to redo the search once in a while.
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