Data WA search enhancements

The Data WA team are excited to bring you a brand new searching experience!

Launching today, we have a whole host of improvements to our dataset search for you:

Autocomplete search suggestions - skip the search results and jump straight to the dataset, or apply a filter to your search with a single click!

Did You Mean prompts and fuzzy searching, so you can spend less effort worrying about minor spelling mistakes (and whether “road” or “roads” would be a better keyword).

Do you take your searching as seriously as we do? Now you can use Advanced search, including searching within specific attributes, stacking terms with AND/OR logic, and even excluding terms with the NOT toggle. Or if you’re already a whiz at Solr queries, try the new Use query language to search option.

Filters have had an overhaul, with a nicer layout, easy access to less popular filters, and the ability to choose more than one filter within a category. Combine with Advanced search to really give your search skills a workout!

Behind the scenes we’ve added a synonym dictionary and better relevancy weightings, to help you find more datasets while keeping the most relevant results on top. Our admins can even manually bump up a dataset’s search weighting if needed.

Love the changes? Why not tell us what you like best using the new Feedback widget, now floating on the right-hand edge of most Data WA pages. And of course, we’re always pleased to hear your thoughts via info@data.wa.gov.au.

– The Data WA team

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I would also like to give a shout out to Keith Moss, Natalia Kacperek, Rachel Handley and Rachel Zhao from the Office of Digital Government for their assistance in providing requirements and the testing of the new search enhancements to Data WA.

Thanks for all your help from the Data WA team.

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