We’re beta testing a new experimental search engine. This is a drop in replacement for the old search engine, but runs on different tech and servers behind the scenes. As of 2025-05-20T07:00:00Z this new search engine is turned ON for all VIP members.
Data indexing in progress
The search data is currently indexing, and I expect it to take 24-48 hours until it’s fully done. Shows and movies will be indexed first since that is most searched. We’re also indexing episodes, people, and lists.
Why are you testing a new search engine?
We’re working to improve the accuracy and speed for search results. We’re hoping this new engine improves both. Data accuracy seems a lot better so far with our internal testing, but we’ll need to tweak and weight the results to get the best output.
What if I want to use the old search engine?
The search engine can be switched in your settings. This is useful if you want to compare results between the 2 engines.
Any limitations?
There shouldn’t be any limitations since the new search engine was created to be a drop in replacement. That means search queries and filtering should all work. Part of this beta test is to figure out what breaks with your specific search queries or filter combinations. Please drop a comment with specific steps to reproduce any errors or unexpected search results.
Bugs or unexpected search results
Please drop a comment with specific steps to reproduce and screenshots so we can take a look. The new engine is pretty much running “out of the box” and we plan to tweak the settings over the coming weeks to improve the results.
The new search engine on the website has been tuned to give much more accurate results. Please give it a try and let me know if you’re seeing better movies and shows being returned.
There is still more changes we have planned, but this is a big step up in accuracy based on our internal testing.
I received better movies and shows, however when using numbers I receive mixed results, Example, the Sci-Fi TV Show “100” for instance, doesn’t show at all, for me.
That’s a tougher one to match, but I do see it listed in position 10 when searching “100” and position 1 when searching “the 100”. This was doing a shows & movies search.
There’s a marked and noticeable improvement. I had temporarily disabled the experimental search because of some errors it had been throwing but it is now much more accurate.
Shows that didn’t propagate and show as fast in the old method of search are now as would be expected. Especially newer shows that might not have been easily found before without using IMDb or TMDB identifiers.
I made some additional improvements, so individual searches (i.e. movies only) are showing a big improvement for some search terms, and especially incomplete search terms. Here is one example for matrix and a comparison between the search engine today, last week, and the old search engine.
I also enabled the new search engine for all signed in members (can be disable in settings while we’re still testing). Next week, I will likely expand the test to guest users as well.
I was searching for a list “The 21st Century’s Most Acclaimed Horror Films” List search results for The 21st Century’s Most Acclaimed Horror Films - Trakt which doesn’t exist on the site - yet it brings me plenty of results for lists without “horror” in it. imho if I add keywords to it should be respected in the search. I would understand filtering out things like “a” “the” or punctuation signs?
Search doesn’t work at all now. All I’m getting are mockbusters and making of’s. Tried four different movies (very well known ones) and I didn’t find any of them.
Hopefully it’s fixed quickly. I didn’t know I had this on by default and was missing a lot with searches. I now switched back to standard, that one works perfectly.
Hello. Whenever I search for something like Avatar, How I Met Your Mother, or any movie or TV show on Trakt, I never get accurate search results only unrelated movies and shows. The only fix I’ve found is to go to Google and type something like “Avatar Trakt” only then do I get the correct link. What is the problem with Trakt?
Game of Thrones , Breaking Bad nothing that is most popular tv shows search will not show i tried many without success.
