The Good e-Reader Android and Blackberry App Store has been going strong for over two years now and searching has always been a big issue. In the past, we relied on Google Search that would not normally index new apps right away. Sometimes, it would take weeks before an app we just uploaded would appear in the search results. Obviously this created a huge bottleneck with app discovery and being able to find new content quickly. Today, we are happy to report we solved this problem.
The new Good e-Reader App Store Search program was custom written for our website to handle the extensive app library. The end result allows you to search for new apps, the second a developer uploads it to the site, or our staff of curators contribute content.
Getting search to function correctly was a huge undertaking. The download suite we use has been 100% custom written for the store, and there are no existing libraries or code that would work. We basically had to start from scratch and build a new system that would use Elasticsearch and talk directly to our database.
Right now, the end result for search is not sexy, but it is functional. One of the direct benefits of the new search is the overall performance boost of the site. It now loads 50% faster than before, primarily because of the way we are handling the presentation and fetching of data. In the coming months we will implement a brand new site design, so stay tuned.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
