How do you think Reddit handles reindexing their posts to keep the accurately in order?

Question

I can't imagine it indexing per vote. It would strain the server innapropriately.

I mention this because I'm trying to do something similar on a project of mine, and can't figure out what the best way to index objects after they have been voted on.

I am using Sunspot-Solr.

Answer 1

Well, I can't say for sure, but they are an open source project. http://code.reddit.com/

Answer 2

I know I'm late, but today reddit fixed their search in a way that brings a new light to your question. The answer is that search engines like Solr can't deal with frequent updates like reddit votes. They're using IndexTank now, and it definitely works! (yes, I am a developer an IndexTank)

Answer 3

I think that if you are want to influence search results via vote counts you can, but you need to do it in an offline/delayed manner. I think the less "real time" your voting impact on search results is, then the better Solr would work with it, so Reddit is a bad use case. Just update the voting every 6 or 12 or 24 hours, and only do it for the subset of documents that have been voted upon. At some point you'll be able to update just a portion of a Solr document, that will help!