When you interact with repeating groups (RGs) outside Bubble (e.g. Google search results page, Facebook feed, Twitter feed, AirBnb search results, etc) you’re often seeing results that have been sorted based on how relevant they are to you.
I don’t believe is possible in Bubble (unless I’m missing some Bubble functionality which is possible - I don’t profess to be an expert).
How can this type of algorithmic sort based on relevance to the individual user be accomplished in a Bubble app?
I imagine I’d have to go outside Bubble and have a third party service return the RG data source list to Bubble but IDK if that is even possible.
Possible? Not possible? If possible, how? Any ideas?
Those algorithms are what make those platforms, so they are worth billions and require the brain power of some the most brilliant minds of the world.
I don’t think the types of algorithms they employ, that is the secret sauce to their muliti-billion dollar enterprises, is possible in Bubble because of the extreme computing power required to sort and shift through troves of data to accomplish the results they do.
You could definitely try to create something that does, but I don’t think Bubble at this stage is going to be the best platform to achieve those types of results.
I agree those companies spend lots of money on THEIR algorithms. Thy do so because, at their scale, marginal improvements to their algorithms mean big increases in incremental revenue.
That said, I don’t believe that with the data science tools available today that building AN algorithm is super hard or requires a ton of computing power.
I wouldn’t expect MY algorithm to sort results based on the relevance to the individual user as well as the big players. I’m just looking to get started with something that is better than the basic sorting Bubble offers.
I suspect the data pipeline, moreso than the algorithm, would be the hard part.
Maybe it’s not possible but this caught my eye: the Algolia Search Integration. Bubble passes your app data to Algolia who then performs searches on you data and return results for “elements like repeating groups and searchboxes”.
This is pretty similar to what I’m seeking which give me hope that something like this is doable in Bubble. It might even do what I’m looking for - one of the benefits listed is “Algolia allows you to tweak the search algorithm, among other parameters” - but it’s hard to tell as it requires the Pro plan which I don’t have.
