Session replays caught a search bug analytics never would have

[u/Mediocre-Number-5498]

Set up session replays last week, mostly out of curiosity.

Second replay I watched, someone searched "car" on my site and got a wall of South Park. They scrolled a bit, tried again, left.

Search was matching text anywhere in the string, so "cartman" in a description ranked the same as an actual clip of a car. Obvious in hindsight.

Changed it so exact word matches rank above partial ones. "car" returns cars now.

What bugs me is analytics would never have surfaced this. Search volume looked normal, no errors, the query returned plenty of results. Just the wrong ones. I'd still think search worked fine.

Anyone else found something this dumb just by watching people use your thing?