Kubernetes Documentation - New search is borderline unusuable.

[YoNoSoyVictor]

I just noticed today that the functionality of kubernetes.io/search has changed and it is extremely bad. I have to use "site:kubernetes.io {search term}" now in Google whenever I want to search for something.

As a quick example, let's say you search for: "Service".

Google -> First result: Service overview, Second result: Example of service usage, Third result: Debugging services. This is in line with what you would expect

In the docs -> First result: Ingresses, Second result: Tailing traffic with Stern, Third result: Define Dependent Environment Variables. Literally none of the results are about Services. Only the first result is somewhat-related

The previous search was not the best, but this is a considerable downgrade. What's the rationale behind these changes?

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Edit: After some superficial debugging it seems like this change was meant for China only, and is caused by the is_china cookie being set to true. You can manually replace this by using your Browser's developer tools (in the case of Firefox, right click anywhere on the page -> Inspect Accesibility Properties -> Storage tab.

There's been a shift in the issue and it appears that multiple users outside of china are also encountering this. Some sample Reddit threads 1 2. This should be addressed.

[dipesh-rawat]

Thank you for the feedback. It appears you are in China, as a new search method has been deployed there. The recent switch to a new search solution (Pagefind) was intended to reduce costs for CNCF caused by the previous search setup for China. For more details, please refer to issue #44475 and PR #46768

[YoNoSoyVictor]

Thank you for the feedback. It appears you are in China, as a new search method has been deployed there. The recent switch to a new search solution (Pagefind) was intended to reduce costs for CNCF caused by the previous search setup for China. For more details, please refer to issue #44475 and PR #46768

Thank you for the feedback Dipesh. As you say, I inspected the cookies through the browser developer tools and found that is_china was set to true. I manually set it to false and the old search function came back.

It seems like I am not the only one experiencing this, and based on this Reddit thread many users are being detected as if they were in China. I am in Spain so I don't know why that cookie was set to true.

[dipesh-rawat]

I am in Spain so I don't know why that cookie was set to true.

In that case this sounds like it might be a bug. It would be helpful to add this information to the issue description, especially if you're outside of China and seeing the new search option.
@YoNoSoyVictor By the way, do you happen to be using any kind of VPN? It's possible that this could be causing the issue.
/area web-development

[YoNoSoyVictor]

I am in Spain so I don't know why that cookie was set to true.

do you happen to be using any kind of VPN? It's possible that this could be causing the issue. /area web-development

Nope. No VPNs or anything. Tested on multiple devices as well. As per the threads I shared in my last message it seems like this is a widespread issue.

I'll update the issue description with this information. Thanks for the assistance 🙏

[TPXP]

I'm using the uBlock Origin ad blocker and it blocks connections to ipinfo.io with default settings. We set is_china=true when failing to get this address, which is probably how it was set on your side

website/static/js/search.js

Line 108 in 37c062c

document.cookie = "is_china=true;" + path + expires;

To change, paste document.cookie="is_china=false;expires=Sun, 09 Nov 3023 09:39:28 GMT;path=/" in a JS console on kubernetes.io

[natalisucks]

/triage accepted
/priority important-soon

[natalisucks]

/assign @nate-double-u @cjyabraham

Given the recent work you've just completed on the CNCF side regarding PageFind, it would be great for the two of you to look into this. We can make sure SIG Docs prioritises review of this work as well, thank you 🙏

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In response to this:

/assign @nate-double-u @cjyabraham

Given the recent work you've just completed on the CNCF side regarding PageFind, it would be great for the two of you to look into this. We can make sure SIG Docs prioritises review of this work as well, thank you 🙏

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[cjyabraham]

We've accepted that the new PageFind search is likely not going to be as good as the Bing search that it replaces. Bing, however, was costing CNCF thousands of dollars per month and so was no longer a reasonable option. After reviewing several replacements, PageFind was the best we could find.

The intention is for PageFind to serve users in China, where Google is blocked, and Google Programmable Search to serve everyone else. We detect the location of a user with the ipinfo.io service. It's likely that this service is blocked for users in China, so if an error occurs, we assume the person is in China. Unfortunately, if people use ad-blocking software that blocks ipinfo.io, then they too will be assumed to be in China.

Where can we go from here? Here are some suggestions:

1. More work could be done to tune the PageFind results.
2. If PageFind results are still not acceptable, we could go back to the drawing board and consider other search solutions.
3. For detecting whether a user is in China, perhaps there are other methods for doing this that won't be blocked by common ad-blockers. Or maybe we could set up a proxy so that the ipinfo script isn't recognized by ad-blockers.