Medium Publications Are No Longer Searchable
What does this mean and what readers can do
Update 31 March 2021: There appears to be a rapid solution by the Medium team overnight (for me). The issue looks like resolved. When I typed one of my publications on the search bar, I can see them filtered by publication category. This is excellent progress.
Here is the screen capture.
Context and Problem
Some readers approached me, pointing out that when they search for my publications on Medium, they cannot find them.
This created instant curiosity and interest to understand the situation.
I went to the Medium homepage and used the search box filtering publications. For all my publications, the error message was, “We couldn’t find any publications.”
I tried a few other publications and received exactly the same message.
Readers cannot search publications on the Medium homepage anymore.
What does this mean?
I do not know what it means. Like many readers, I ask the same question.
Why does Medium stop searching publications on their websites?
Publications are the critical components of this ecosystem.
Thousands of readers use publications to consume curated content. Thousands of writers leverage publications to amplify their messages and reach out to a broader audience.
Publications are my reasons for enjoying this platform. They are my primary information source on Medium.
Some readers asked me what they can do to find publications.
Solution
Let me share an effective workaround to address this problem.
The workaround is my go-to site toppub.
This site has already indexed 16,559 Medium publications.
I know it sounds weird. You cannot search publications from the native site and have to use a third-party tool for this purpose.
To search for a publication, you enter the publication’s name in the search bar and click on the search button.
The search brings all publications with the keyword you use. For example, when I typed ILLUMINATION in the search bar, I received these results.
When you click on a specific publication, it provides all essential information such as publication description, tags, followers, reviews, editors, and the publication’s social sites like Twitter and Facebook.
I clicked on ILLUMINATION and come up with this view. Details are more extended, so I cut the page in half to represent the view in a single screenshot.
https://toppub.xyz/publications/illumination
In addition, when you tweet a publication, it creates a pleasant tweet for the publication on Twitter. Here is the screenshot in a sample tweet.
We can also browse publications page by page. There are thousands of pages, though.
For example, ILLUMINATION is on page 4.
When I click on page 4, I can see the publications sorted based on the number of followers.
Conclusion
When I walked through this quick process, one of my readers asked a rhetorical question: “why would I need Medium search?”.
He was right. I always use this site to find publications in my interest areas. As pointed out, there are 16,559 publications creating the backbone of Medium.
Like many other writers and readers, I don’t know whether this on purpose or a system issue. Time will tell.
In the meantime, we can use toppub to search for Medium publications.
Related to losing the search function, I cannot find the top writers either. We can see the top stories but cannot see top writers any more.
Again, I have no idea why Medium removed the list of top writers from the tags. I used to enjoy that useful feature, but it disappeared with no notice, unless I missed the notice.
These recent changes blow my mind. Since November, the platform has turned into a mystery. The changes look counterintuitive to me. I am getting more and more confused about what Medium is trying to achieve. I hope something more positive comes after these changes. I remain optimistic.
Thank you for reading my perspectives.
If you have any ideas on this situation, please comment.
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About me
I love amplifying important messages and informing writers.
I am the founder and chief editor of ILLUMINATION, ILLUMINATION-Curated, ILLUMINATION’ S MIRROR, ILLUMINATION Book Chapters, Technology Hits, and SYNERGY. I established these significant publications supporting 15,000+ writers and serving 150,000+ readers on Medium.
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