Search box is too generic

Hi, I have been asked to change the search results from the search box in the menu bar.

The results that are being displayed are quite often un related to the product searched for. If a customer searches for oil filter, I am getting all results related to oil and all results related to filter. SO I am getting oil sumps and air filters among many others returned in the results. I am getting hundreds of results returned which is just unfriendly to the user.

I have tried enclosing the searches in quotes, but I am getting a lot of results still. Is there anyway of making the search results more specific without being completely specific to what has been entered?

Thanks.

the search is a keyword search of the flowing columns:
ps4_products.ProductID
ProductSKU
ProductName
ProductCartDesc
ProductShortDesc
ProductLongDesc


a search of:
oil filter


will look for Oil OR Filter in those columns. using Double Quotes around the Search:
"Oil Filter"

Will cause it to look for the string Oil Filter in those columns.

you can edit the webassist/plugins/catalog/results.php or results_grid.php page to change the columns that are included in the search.


look for the following line:

$KeyArr1 = array("ps4_products.ProductID", "ProductSKU", "ProductName", "ProductCartDesc", "ProductShortDesc", "ProductLongDesc");

and remove the columns you dont wish to search on.

If a user enters the words:

Range Rover Sport Oil Filter

how do I get the search to return only those results that have all of those words in (regardless of which order it was typed)?

Without double quotes, what I am getting currently is results that have any one of the words typed leading to thousands of results like oil sumps, air filters, sports seats etc most of which may not be related to the Range Rover Sport. If I enclose the search words in quotes, then the results end up with nothing if they aren't typed in exactly to match a DB record... so if I searched "Oil Filter Range Rover Sport", I'd get nothing!

How can I over come this?

Just as an aside, I think this is where lucene becomes beneficial because it apparently gives results based on relevance, and the most relevant result is listed first, which is much more user friendly rather than returning loads of results in any order, or returning nothing because the exact match wasn't found. It would be good to see an extension from you clever guys built around lucene... if there isn't any licensing issues!

use a comma to separate the search terms:

Range, Rover, Sport, Oil, Filter


Will cause the search to use AND, it will search the 6 columns i referenced in my previous reply for Range AND Rover AND Sport AND Oil AND Filter

OK, is there a scripting method of placing commas before user inputted spaces when the search is clicked?

If so, I think I'm getting somewhere!

Thanks.

add this to line 1 of the products_results.php page to force commas into the search terms:

<?php if(isset($_GET["S_ProductName"])) $_GET["S_ProductName"] = str_replace(" ", ", ", $_GET["S_ProductName"]); ?>

Excellent... that worked a treat!

Thank you Jason

I have to say Jason, that last line you've told me to add to enable me to insert commas before spaces has made a huge difference. As a result, it is both quite generic or really very specific... all from the same search box. In fact, it's enabled me to get rid of the more detailed search entirely.

Thanks again.

Glad to hear it is working.