Google Dataset Items Translator · Apify
Hi Apify team, just a quick comment.
I noticed you changed how the Actors are listed and sorted, in a way that I frankly do not quite understand... The way you are sorting the Actors "by relevance" doesn't make to much sense (maybe only to me?) I will explain with an example (Actors chosen randomly): How can this Actor: https://apify.com/hamza.alwan/google-dataset-items-translator (Modified 17 days ago, 1 user, 27 runs, listed on page 3 as I am writing this) be more "relevant" than this one: https://apify.com/epctex/realtor-scraper (Modified 19 hours ago, 458 users, 16.5k runs, listed on page 6).
Again, the two actors selected are just random examples, the list goes on... botom line is: Can you enlighten us and explain what "relevance" means for apify? is there a known way to become more relevant?
Thanks for your feedback in advance.
Apify
Google Dataset Items Translator · Apify
Translate any dataset field(s) to any of the supported languages using the Google Translate website, it goes through all the items in the dataset and translates all of the selected fields
Apify
Realtor.com Scraper 🏘️ · Apify
Scrape realtor.com for data on millions of properties. Crawl real estate listings and extract descriptions, images, features, pricing, property details, neighborhood, nearby schools, and all other property details. You can specify search terms, filters, and much more.
10 Replies
evident-indigo•2y ago
Hey @lu4t, thanks for sharing your thoughts on it.
Why is this important to you? I'm trying to understand if you're looking at it from a user perspective (someone who wants to use the Actors) or a developer perspective.
absent-sapphire•2y ago
Actually both.
From a developer PoV, I want to create products that are relevant to the user who is surfing the marketplace, or I would not create an Actor that is not relevant for a particular community.
From a user view point, we all know what happens when you go to Amazon and buy Amazon's recommended product...
But the point is not me and my preferences, the point is: What is the meaning of "Relevance" for Apify?... I think it's a fair question, and this info is quite relevant when it comes to using or investing time to add content to the platform.
Or is this a "secret sauce"?
evident-indigo•2y ago
@lu4t Thanks, that make sense 🙂
The "Relevance" sorting is kind of a secret sauce 😄 And we'll be working on some changes in the near future related to it and we want to make Actors from our community more visible. I understand it's not ideal at the moment.
absent-sapphire•2y ago
I see. Thanks for the clarification. I don't think this will inspire developers to keep creating content on this platform until the top-secret sauce can be tasted. I think we had enough with Coca-Cola or Google's PageRank. To me "relevance" should be defined as something else.
evident-indigo•2y ago
@lu4t That's fair and I understand the frustration. But trust me, we want to promote developers work way more than we're doing it now and we know it's something we could be doing better.
absent-sapphire•2y ago
Thanks for the sincerity. No frustration on my side at all, I 100% understand you're a business and you run it the best you can to get to your goals. Some businesses believe their odds are higher playing the secret formula game, and sometimes it's the right bet.
national-gold•2y ago
We have some ideas how to improve this cc @Zuzka (Apify)
fair-rose•2y ago
@lu4t Hey, I dont thint it is really a secret, we rank some of the Actors internally to be shown higher than others. Otherwise it is sorted by the overall number of users. None of it is IMO optimal and as @Daniel Do pointed out we are working on improvements here. But to the relevance point of view, this is more important when you actually look for something in the Store - so e.g. when you search Twitter, then the relevance is more prominent - you first get Actors with Twitter in the actual title of the Actor and later on also Actors that have the keyword in readme (like getting twitter handles by the Contact detail scraper). BTW I would be happy to hear all your and include some of yours suggections and ideas!
absent-sapphire•2y ago
Thanks for the clarification, I understand now; it's not a secret sauce, it's an in-house sauce. Then my recommendation would be to be able to default to something that hasn't undergone internal kitchen processing, and allow individuals to decide if they're genuinely interested in it. I guess this is something that can easily be added to each account profile on a future release. Both as a developer and an Actor user I am way more interested on raw metrics from the community (like number of installs, number of users, or number of runs) and it's very annoying to see a default view called "by Relevance", which has absolutely no relevance to me.
fair-rose•2y ago
True true. We are also planning for ratings and reviews and will most likely ditch the in-house sauce than, but Apify is not only the Store so our internal team works on different issues now. I am optimistic we could have the different sorting by the end of the year...