Hi David,
I'm trying to work out how to improve search results relevancy and improve the amount of comparisons. Maybe I'm going wrong somewhere.
I have about 80,000 products loaded in the system. The search results retruned are quite mixed. For example, if a user typed in "ugg boots" it will return Ugg Boots but if a user types in "uggs" it will return Buggys.
In addition, am I correct in saying that in order to find matching products (to trigger a comparison) the product name must be an exact match?
At the moment I have 4 catalogues which use the same naming convention (because I think they're owned by the same merchant) so they match but I'm not getting any other matches with other merchants.
Finally, how is the search indexing updated - is this done every time I add a new feed?
Do you have any tips/advice to help me improve my results. Is this where the category mapping/product mapping comes in?
Sorry for so many questions - I'm just trying to get a good understanding of everything!
Thanks,
George
Hi George,
There are 2 search methods used; the FULL TEXT index (which searches whole words, and returns by relevance) when every word in the query is longer than 3 characters, and the regular LIKE '%word%' style SQL (% is a wildcard) if any words are 3 characters or less. There are one or tweaks that can be hard coded; perhaps if you wanted to email me some example /search.php?q=... links to your site that you feel could return better results I'll take a look for you.
You are correct that product matching is based entirely on name; but don't forget that the latest distribution includes dynamic product mapping; so if you can set-up a mapping with a master product name; and then in the alternatives box simply enter a model number (where applicable); and then any product name containing that model number will be imported with the master product name - and then of course compared together. I appreciate that may not be such an option across 80K products (it's more for niche sites); but in most cases you should find that the related products unit brings up alternatives that may in fact be the same product...
The index is updated whenever a feed is imported...
Cheers,
David.