3dcart search -Am I missing something?

[Danab]

Afternoon!

I have been working on our new 3dcart site and am experiencing what I hope can be fixed with a setting somewhere. The more detailed of a search term that is used, the worse the search results are (this is the opposite of what I am used to). For example:

If a customer types in "breast" in the search box, they will only pull up the items for breast cancer.

If the customer types in "breast cancer" they will pull up everything that has to do with both breast cancer and any other type of cancer. Once my store is filled, this will literally mean hundreds of items that have nothing to do with breast cancer will show up in their search results. Instead of looking for the combination of words breast cancer, it is using them separately?

I can get it to work if I type in "breast +cancer" but none of my customers are going to know how to do that.

Anyone know how to fix or workaround this?

[cbsteven]

My site doesn't work like this. It uses AND rather than OR. I'm not sure why yours would behave like that. If you provide a link maybe I can figure it out.

[Danab]

Having the search defaulting to OR and not AND sounds like the problem I am having.

The sites in closed status while I work on it (and smash my face on my desk LOL) so the only way you could view it would be for me to temp. allow your IP access. Maybe you could PM me, or is this a job for tech. support?

[cbsteven]

Can you paste the code from your frame.html file that controls the search box?

[Danab]

I think this is it. I'm not using the quicksearch function.


<!--START: FRAME_SEARCH-->
<table width="200" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0">
<form method="get" name="searchForm" action="search.asp" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<tr>
<td><div style="background: url(assets/templates/[template]/images/BG_Textfield.jpg) no-repeat; width: 178px; height: 30px;">
<div style="padding: 2px 0px 2px 6px;">
<input name="keyword" id="searchlight" type="text" class="search-text" style="border: 0px; background: #FFF;" value="search by keyword" size="32" onFocus="javascript:if (document.searchForm.keyword.value=='search by keyword') {document.searchForm.keyword.value='';};" onBlur="if(this.value.length == 0) this.value = 'search by keyword'">
</div>
</div></td>
<td width="66"><input type="image" name="search" src="assets/templates/[template]/images/search.jpg"></td>
</tr>
</form>
</table>
<!--END: FRAME_SEARCH--></td>

[cbsteven]

Nothing jumps out as being wrong.

When I search my site the URL to the results page looks like:

http://MYSITE.COM/search.asp?keyword=keyword1+keyword2&search.x=0&search.y=0

and it always produces an AND result.

Does your URL look similar? If it does and is producing an OR result I would try opening a ticket. But I don't see why it would do that. I don't even know how to FORCE my site to give an OR result if I wanted to.

[Danab]

Mine looks like this. I don't know how to insert it as code so I lopped off the http://:

mysite.com/search.asp?keyword=breast+cancer&search.x=16&searc h.y=19

I'll try opening a ticket. Maybe something is messed up in the search.asp . I'll post if I find out anything. Thank you for the help!

[Danab]

Sigh,

Support just sent me an e-mail telling me to go to their store and purchase an improved search app. The cheapest one is $60 a month! I asked them if they could at least check the search.asp file and see if it was glitched.

So frustrated right now. If I search for "Breast Cancer Bracelet", it pulls up every page of my site that just has the word bracelet on it including my payment, shipping and returns page.

No way in heck that is working right! If it is, 3Dcart has the worst search ever!

[cbsteven]

Support can be hard to deal with when it isn't straightforward issues. You will have to explain very clearly why it is a problem and how to reproduce it, with examples.
Step one would be to acknowledge that it should be an AND search not an OR search. Step two would be to get them to try to fix it.

[GonzaloGil]

The way the default search works is as follows:

If you type "keyword1 keyword2"

It looks for

"keyword1 keyword2" assigns a ranking of 1
Then searches for "keyword1" assigns a ranking of 1
Then searches for "keyword2" assigns a ranking of 1

Then sorts the results by the sum of the 3.
So, a page with both keywords together, should show up higher than one with just 1 of the 2 keywords.

So, the search is trying really hard to find a result for the user. If you like, you can disable most of this stuff by disabling some of the search features from the store settings page:

https://support.3dcart.com/3dcart2/K...store-settings

maybe make it only search on product name.

[Danab]

GonzaloGil,

Thank you for replying. Based upon what you wrote I tried a few more tests and wanted to share the results. Maybe you can help me figure out whats happening?

Test search= "Red Ribbon" with Product name, description and extended description being the only search fields checked here's the first 2 results in order:

1. Lavender Wristband - has the word "ribbon" in the description, but the word "Red" only shows up in the categories menu (I even searched the source code). So it should have had a weight of 1.

2. Red Wristband - has both the words Red and Ribbon for the item in the name and description (a total of 8 times) so it should have been weighed higher.

Repeat test search - "Red Ribbon" with product name and item description checked as search fields. = No Results. Why didn't the Red Wristband show up? It has both search words in the item name and description?

I do not see the logic for the weighting system you described working on my site at all.

[cbsteven]

That is weird.

Gonzalo doesn't monitor the boards very often so he might not see your reply. Might be worth shooting him an email at gil at 3dcart.com

[GonzaloGil]

The search does not count the # of instances of a word, it only checks if the word exists. (Not Google like by any means)

So in your example, i am assuming that you don't have any items with the name "Red Ribbon" as that item would display #1, then, it looks for "RED" and "RIBBON", and, so, that's how you got those 2 results. Both #1 and #2 results rank the same.

[cbsteven]

It seems like even with the system working the way you describe that his Red Wristband item should come up before Lavender Wristband, since the Lavender item doesn't have the word red in the product record, only in the categories menu which should just be in the frame.html, right?

[Danab]

OK so to make it weirder I did some more tests.... I disabled everything except the search by product name (still have advanced search option checked).

Search for "Blue Wristband" and only my Blue Wristband shows up (1 result).

Search for "Red Wristband" and the Red Wristband shows up as number 1, but then every other wristband is showing up after it (13 results).

What the heck? Its not even being consistent with just the product name searches. /facepalm.

So I completely disabled advanced search......

Searched for "Pin" and the first search result is a Baby Blessings Wristband (I guess because "Pink" in the item description contains "pin"??) and the second result is an actual Pin called a "Jade Spray Pin".

GAHHHHHHHH!!!!

Forgot to add that the Blue Wristband, Red Wristband and Red Ribbon search results were better with advanced search off. So I think advanced search is definitely more wonkey but either search is giving me weird results.