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Changing the seach function


myideal

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Posted

Hi all,

 

Just searched the forum but cant find what im after - but maybe that is because I not really know how to word the mod I want to make ...... but I shall have a go here and hopefully someone can help.

 

Currently the site seach looks for exact matches like "glass", however if i misspelt the word say "glasss" nothing will show up. So is there a way in which I can change the search function to show words that match mostly but dont have to be direct?

 

I hope you understand what i am getting at, and if this is possible any help would be great.

 

Mark

Posted
Hi all,

 

Just searched the forum but cant find what im after - but maybe that is because I not really know how to word the mod I want to make ...... but I shall have a go here and hopefully someone can help.

 

Currently the site seach looks for exact matches like "glass", however if i misspelt the word say "glasss" nothing will show up. So is there a way in which I can change the search function to show words that match mostly but dont have to be direct?

 

I hope you understand what i am getting at, and if this is possible any help would be great.

 

Mark

 

the only reasonable way I can think of is to use the header tag fields (if you have that contribution) and also let search look in there. If those keywords are ok for the SE's then why not for your site users. There you can add stuff like gllass glasses etc.

Treasurer MFC

Posted

Thats an interesting idea, and I would guess it is would be a simple change to make, however that could provide loads of wrong results if you get my drift - as say every product carries the wrong spelling, then all will be shown.

 

However I like that idea and maybe with some tweeking it could be the answer.

Posted

I am suggesting the following from my experience because the requirement is " to show words that match mostly but dont have to be direct".

(Not like Google's suggestion when you mispell a word)

 

1. Create another field in the products description table

2. Populate the fields with the soundex values each word in the title and description (Limit it words that have more than 3 or 4 characters)

3. Modify the search to also match the values in your newly created field.

 

Simply stated "Soundex" is a "sound-alike" value. I had this on my pet supplies site for a few months until a customer complained that there were too many "wierd" matches.

"Fleas" matched "Fleece" (They both have a soundex vaue of F420.)

"Collars" matched "Colors" (They both have a soundex vaue of C462.)

 

I eventually stopped it since since I'm working on a Google type suggestion when searching that sounds like a good candidate for a contribution.

 

The preceeding was from my actual experience, YMMV.

Robert

Posted

Thanks Rob, that sounds like a really good idea and quite fool proof. Does it hinder the loading speed of the site though? Im quite pushed on load times at the mo with my site. :-"

 

Oh if you want any help with your contribution then I am quite willing to be a "test" site if you want to role it out in the future. :thumbsup:

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