About not related search results

[bace23f2]

Hello community,

I have a problem,

When I try search freelancer who work as a freelancer on upwork by filtering talent section. I can't see related freelancers depend on my keywords.

Here are an attached file, It will show you what I said.

Waiting for your response

Thank you
Have a good day
PMD Madusanka

[12d900e6]

Hi Nikola,

Please look into this again, the issue is not fixed. Yes, I do see one person related to my field on top and he/she is also not a pro but some new person with little to no earnings. Please ask the team to look into this matter.

[pgiambalvo]

It's still not fixed. And a hard as it may be to believe, clearing your browser, cookies, whatver, restarting, doesn't help. 

[srinivas794]

Hi Nikola,

Has this issue been fixed? By when can we expect this issue to be resolved ? The search results don't seem to be related to keywords still. My profile views have flatlined pretty much.

Regards

Srinivas

[madgulkar]

Looks like still search results (freelancer search) are not showing properly ,all irrelevant field freelancer results are showing when searched for freelancer keywords,we are loosing our work as clients are not getting relevent freelancers listed,kindly update on issue status.

[tomzilla1]

An aside to this story. They introduced "Packaged Services" where you can set for example 30 min consultation for $xyz. It asks you your schedule, how many days in advance should the potential client be able to schedule. I set mine to 5 days at the time since I'm pretty busy that week. Well guess what... Got an email about a consultation scheduled literally 10 minutes before it happened. I was going to cancel it since I said 5 days in the system... But cancelling it will hurt your JSS, so I went through with it. It didn't concern me much at the time, was surprised, but not concerned, but... now seeing the search functions completely "messed up" -- idk. Upwork what is going on? We have the top 3% folks here couldn't get their profile shown. And I'm not even going to bring up the top 1% (expert vetted)...

[tomzilla1]

And I just noticed they merged my "I can't even find qualified freelancers..." in Freelancers forums to "About not related search results" in Support forums --- without any notification or indication. So confusing. Took me 3 minutes to realize I wasn't crazy. And it's marked as being solved in the title of my browser...

I searched for example "Google Ads" earlier, and almost all of page 1 to 3 were "Outbound Sales, Branding" -- has nothing to do with Google Ads nor digital marketing. I did notice however, some of those profiles had Google Ads in their "tags, skills" but when you look at their full profile, and their headline, that's not their trade, they are sales people... They did add a new feature that suggests to you for example skills/tags you may consider adding to your profile, I think a lot of people just add it hoping to get more views... when that's not what they do at all. A new client is going to see this and instantly realize wow this platform is not serving up results I'm looking for, and I don't think they are going to sit there for 30 minutes to filter through beyond 5 pages...

Last year around this time, I get anywhere from at least 10 to upwards of maybe 35 proposals every single day. Sure there's spammy ones. These days it's all spam, and no where near the proposals from last year. I got a proposal yesterday asking me to take pictures of my phone... 

It all makes sense now. The search function is broken. The least/irrelevant qualified results are shown first.

[pgiambalvo]

It is by no means "solved."

[madgulkar]

Why still no update from support on search issue?,issue still persist and no corrective action till now,whats going on upwork?

[PradeepH]

Hi Sumitra,

Thank you for your message. Could you please try again after clearing Cookies and Cache on your browser? You can also try using a different browser. Feel free to message us if problems persist.

Thank you,

Pradeep

[srinivas794]

Hi,

Hope everyone is doing good.

It's been about a month (a month and a half maybe) and the results for the talent search on Upwork seem to have broken.  Previously the search would return appropriate results for a particular keyword showing freelancers who actually worked on that particular skill. For about a month or so, the results show freelancers either who are either inactive/ $0 earnings or show completely random freelancers based on the keyword search.

It would have been a great move by Upwork if it was helping new freelancers shine on the platform by showing them on the top, but at the moment it does not seem to be the case as the results are totally random.

This post had mentioned the issue as well but seems like there have been no fixes yet.

https://community.upwork.com/t5/Support/About-not-related-search-results/m-p/1114337#M40774

@Upwork team could you please let us know what is the status of this issue? Will there be a fix for this anytime soon?

My profile views/job invites have pretty much flatlined at the moment. Any response regarding this would be invaluable.

Thanks & Regards

Srinivas Prabhu

[916322e1]

Upwork, please fix this problem!

[pragya_vaishanav]

This needs to be fixed asap.

[12d900e6]

I see a few Monday.com people on top now but they are not Top-rated or the ones who have been on the platform for long and deserve to be invited 10 times a week but it's not happening. Please fix this issue as my stats showing in search have gone from 10 per day to zero. There is no way that any business can now search for experts.

[PradeepH]

Hi Ramsha,

Thank you for your message. I am sorry to hear about your My Stats page. Search results vary depending on the type of profile used to conduct the search, since a number of factors are taken into account. Clients may get different search results for the same keywords and filters than freelancers using the same parameters. In addition, freelancer profiles are regularly rotated in search results in order to give everybody a fair chance at being discovered by clients.

Thank you,

Pradeep

[srinivas794]

Hi Pradeep,

The issue mentioned above by the OP is the same as the one mentioned here in this post. Can we get a timeline for when this issue will be fixed?

Please take a look at the link below:

https://community.upwork.com/t5/Support/About-not-related-search-results/m-p/1120823#M42581

[pgiambalvo]

They need to undo whatever changes they made to Search a couple of months ago and put it back the way it was. Upwork explaining how it works is irrelevant  -- freelencers and clients don't like the way it works now .

[srinivas794]

Exactly.  Upwork's search used to be perfect once upon a time. Now it just returns random results. 

[konraad2015]

I just searched for Business Plan Writers, Top Rated, and none of the freelancers on the search results are business plan writers.

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

**Edited for Community Guidelines**

[srinivas794]

Yes, that's the thing. Both the freelancers and clients are going to get affected by this. Upwork needs to revert to a previous change where the search seems to have broken. 

[759e32fa]

Hi Khangelani,

Thank you for reaching out to us. I'll share your report with our team and update this thread once I have more information on this. I'm sorry for the inconvenience this may have caused.

[max_spencer]

Hey everyone. I have same problem. 0 profile views per month, 0 invites... Can someone help?

[52bf3193]

Please fix this issues asap. This is very problematic.

[pgiambalvo]

Bottom line before they changed the way search works, I used to get lots of invitations. Since they changed it, I get none. Nothing changed on my end so this is Upwork's fault.

[kochubei_valeria · Accepted solution]

Hi All,

I'd like to provide an update and address some of the concerns you've shared here.

The original issue reported here in mid-July involved profile titles and some other profile attributes not showing. That was causing major issues and errors with search results. That specific issue was resolved. Other than that, no changes have been made to search recently.

That said, the team is currently working on making additional relevance improvements that will be launched throughout the year. I do not have a specific timeline for when those will be released yet, but will make sure to share more with the Community once it happens.

A few things I'd like to note:

• As long as a profile isn't set to private by its owner, it will be discoverable in search.
• Various factors go into search results, and results may differ over time, in part to allow more freelancers a chance to be discovered. Some considerations may include Freelancer skills, experience, and platform ratings, as well as other elements geared towards determining a potential match for the client’s job. There are no immediate plans to change that.
• The general marketplace dynamics vary over time and so can the number of invites freelancers receive.

[pgiambalvo]

"The general marketplace dynamics vary over time and so can the number of invites freelancers receive." Yes, of course. But with so many of us reporting that they have dropped to zero and have not returned at all, it cannot merely be due to marketplace dynamics. Ups and downs yes, completely disappearing for so many top rated freelencers after getting them consistently for years, no.

[ljms]

So explain why I've had no invites or views since the end of June? This is not normal. I normally receive several per week, and I have for several years.

[mushavvirkhan]

It's been 2 months since I started browsing Upwork dedicatedly, made all the changes to my profile and made it as relevant as possible for the jobs and work I am looking for!

But for the past 1 month, I do not see any relevant jobs that match my skills; I am into SEO, Inbound, and Content Marketing, all the jobs I am seeing are mostly for writers, and it's getting irritating.

Please guide me, so I can start sending proposals to businesses where I can give the most value, and help them grow their business online too.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

[ljms]

//

[52bf3193]

The issue has been resolved. I can search talents and find relevant results now. Seeing this fixed feels great. Thanks Upwork for taking this into account! 

[trembit]

I'm sorry to say, that the issue is not resolved!

I can't find myself on the list of freelancers. I'm the top expert in a very narrow niche, the technology called "WebRTC".

When I search freelancers by WebRTC keyword, some users in the first 2 search pages even don't contain a single WebRTC keyword in the profiles.

Is there a way to fix that somehow? It's a big problem for Upwork as well!

How customers can invite the best freelancers if they have been shown completely different freelancers?