Search is a bit random

[lloyd_borrett]

Thanks Rod, but I’m NOT keen on using Google Custom Search within Zen Cart. First, it’s a Google paid for product, which means the price is unlikely to be reasonable. I'd need a way to log searches for a while to know what it's likely to cost me.

Second, I’d need to see it working somewhere where it’s handled well within Zen Cart. Got any examples?

I’d prefer Zen Cart to be handling search just a bit better.

I would have thought it reasonably easy to improve the Zen Cart search to handle stuff with a hyphen. Search for a word with a hyphen in the keywords list, e.g. ‘air-spool’. Then add that term with the hyphen replaced by a space (e.g. ‘air spool’) and without the hyphen (e.g. ‘airspool’) to the keyword list. Then do the search.

Right now while writing product descriptions I have to be mindful to put all hyphen variants into the product descriptions, e.g. 'air-spool', 'air spool' and 'airspool', which typically makes them look a bit weird. It's not done for SEO (because the search engines handle it), but because of Zen Cart search limitations.

But I might be missing something.

Best regards, Lloyd Borrett.

[RodG]

I’d need to see it working somewhere where it’s handled well within Zen Cart. Got any examples?

Not at the moment (that I can think of).

I would have thought it reasonably easy to improve the Zen Cart search to handle stuff with a hyphen. Search for a word with a hyphen in the keywords list

I am, and forever will be puzzled over what a 'keyword' actually is.

e.g. ‘air-spool’. Then add that term with the hyphen replaced by a space (e.g. ‘air spool’) and without the hyphen (e.g. ‘airspool’) to the keyword list. Then do the search.

But then why stop at the hyphen? Shouldn't 'air_spool’ also have the conversion to ‘air spool’ ?
What if the search query is for ‘Airs pool’ - Does the searchee really want to see results for ‘air spool’ ?

Right now while writing product descriptions I have to be mindful to put all hyphen variants into the product descriptions, e.g. 'air-spool', 'air spool' and 'airspool', which typically makes them look a bit weird.

TBH, you don't *have* to be mindful, it is more that you *choose* to. Given the same situation *my* choice would be to pick one and be consistent about it.

It's not done for SEO (because the search engines handle it), but because of Zen Cart search limitations.

But I might be missing something.

Best regards, Lloyd Borrett.

What I think you are probably missing is that there is no consensus about how a SE should work, other than it is supposed to intuitively bring up the desired result for the searchee no matter how vague the search query. Google have put a lot of processing power into achieving this aim, which can't be replicated with a 'simple' search and finite amount of data.

It actually wouldn't be hard to implement your suggestion (replace hyphens/underscores with spaces then search for both 'air spool' and 'airspool', but it would also be more practical to replace these characters AND spaces with nulls, this will allow all variants be found with a single query. Downside is, unwanted results - If I search for 'air spool' I don't want 'airspool' being visible in the results.

Of course, it gets more complex than this if/when you take the AND/OR scenario into account. A person searching for 'air spool' could be looking for exactly that, or they may be searching for something that contains 'air' AND 'spool', or perhaps 'air' OR 'spool'.

The point I'm trying to make here is yes, it would be "reasonably easy to improve the Zen Cart search to handle stuff with a hyphen", but is this something that *everyone* wants? I doubt it. Is it easy to stop at *just* making this 'improvement', or is this just the thin end of a very big wedge that eventually evolved into Google?

Where does it stop?

Cheers
RodG

[carlwhat]

with regards to the original poster's problem, which seems real.

if seems that there are at least 3 phillip lim bags. if we pull the search out from the description we can see them here:

http://hgbagsonline.com/cart/index.p...keyword=pashli

however, if we search for phillip, only 1 of them shows up:

http://hgbagsonline.com/cart/index.p...eyword=phillip

which suggests to me that somehow something "might" be wrong in how the product name is stored in the DB; although i could be wrong.

i have rarely found these problems to be associated with the template....

if i wanted to find the root of the problem, i would look at the ../includes/modules/pages/advanced_search_result/header.php file. at the bottom of the file, these is a variable called $listing_sql. i would put a break there (on a test server) prior to the $zco_notifier statement, and find out what that variable contains ("die($listing_sql);" would work). i would then run that sql statement on your DB. from that statement, you can find why your searching might be going wrong.

hope that helps. good luck.

[eyeb]

Hi...Thanks carlwhat - I'll look into that. Also want to acknowledge bdltoe - I'll look at your suggestion too (while not a solution would help find the source of the problem .. i.e. template).