Search Improvements
Search Improvements (2026-03-27): Global search now covers guides, questions, skills, roles, research, and updates with typo tolerance and ranked relevance.
Feature area: Global Search
On this page
This release covers Search Improvements Version 1.9.0, shipped 2026-03-27. Status: shipped. No breaking changes.
Summary
Global search now covers guides, questions, skills, roles, research, and updates with typo tolerance and ranked relevance.
Users could not find content across siloed indexes; search felt broken on partial matches and synonyms. Unified search index with stemming, skill alias expansion, and click-through feedback for ranking.
What Changed
Unified index
NewAll entity types in one searchable catalog.
Typo tolerance
ImprovedEdit distance matching on titles and aliases.
Ranking signals
ImprovedBoost by practice frequency and recency for questions.
First-three click rate
Before
52%
After
74%
30-day rolling average
- Unified index — All entity types in one searchable catalog.
- Typo tolerance — Edit distance matching on titles and aliases.
- Ranking signals — Boost by practice frequency and recency for questions.
Why We Built It
Users could not find content across siloed indexes; search felt broken on partial matches and synonyms.
We prioritized this work because AI quality feedback correlated with missing context in this surface. The fix needed to be durable—not a patch—so we addressed root causes in Global Search rather than symptoms alone.
Engineers, recruiters, and hiring managers all benefit when Honestify behaves predictably in production. This release reflects that bar.
User Impact
Search success rate (click on first three results) improved from 52% to 74%.
| Audience | How you benefit |
|---|---|
| Engineers | Faster profile setup, clearer AI answers, less manual rework |
| Recruiters | More complete profiles and reliable share links when candidates use Honestify |
| Founders / hiring managers | Better signal on candidate preparation and skills alignment |
| Platform engineers | Improved observability and clearer error surfaces |
Relevant skills: system design, embeddings, typescript, react. Target roles: backend engineer, full stack engineer, ai engineer.
Technical Highlights
- PostgreSQL tsvector + trigram indexes
- Nightly index rebuild from entity catalogs
- Search analytics pipeline
- Debounced client with result prefetch
Changes covered by integration tests and Playwright smoke paths on critical user journeys.
Before
Search Improvements: before vs after
Before
Separate per-collection searches with exact substring matching.
After
Single search bar with faceted filters and synonym-aware matching.
Users moving from the previous experience should notice single search bar with faceted filters and synonym-aware matching.
Screenshots
Future Improvements
What we are building next
- Semantic search overlay
- Search within public profiles (opt-in)
- Command-K palette on dashboard
Known limitations
- · Semantic layer not yet live—keyword + fuzzy only
Feedback welcome: Reply via in-app feedback or support—especially if you hit edge cases we did not cover in this release.
Related Features
This update connects to other Honestify work:
- Related updates: skills library introduced, role pages introduced, performance improvements
- Guides: technical interview guide, software engineer career roadmap, how to learn system design
- Research: most valuable engineering skills, fastest growing skills on honestify, most active roles on honestify
- Practice questions: tell me about yourself, explain rest apis, design url shortener
Create your own AI profile
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