What fields are cataloged for site search?

[mueller]

We are using the Custom Fields for product information on our site and in doing some testing it does not appear that content entered in these fields is cataloged for the search functionality built into 3DC.

Can someone please tell me this is not the case? I would be incredibly surprised if there was an open field for a product which is meant to hold a significant amount of product information and it was not accessed when doing a search.

I have looked and cannot find anywhere in the documentation where it states what fields are/aren't indexed for the search. Does anyone know where to find this?

[bristweb]

i also noticed this while testing site search. as far as i can tell, the 'extra fields' are not part of the search results....basically rendering them meaningless. i'm not completely sure, but it appears this is the case.

this is unfortunate because those fields would be very helpful to organize a search so that we dont have to put a bunch of keywords on the product description. for example, a search for dirt might bring up a shovel without having the word 'dirt' anywhere on the product description.



** crossing my fingers for an advanced search in 3.0 **

[mueller]

The reply to the support request I opened confirms this. I was going to post back here after I received a response to my questions for clarification. I want to know if ANY other pages are indexed such as site content pages, since I consider the content on these pages important to customers.

Alternatively I have asked Gonzalo if I can install a third party search program on the site that I have used with great success on other sites. It is easy on the servers and is highly configurable. Basically you spider the site using software that runs on your local machine (no software running on the server) and then upload the flat file results to the server. It can run via ASP, PHP, CGI and others.

We NEED to be able to have our entire site searched since the CONTENT is what will help sell the PRODUCTS.

I will post back when I know more.

[bristweb]

update:

while reviewing one of the tutorial videos (http://www.3dcart.com/video_tutorial...tID=1&vid_ID=1 section 33)

it appears that the keywords on the product information tab are not meta-keywords (don't know why i didn't notice this earlier - metakeywords are in the advanced tab). these keywords are included in the search.

SO:
you could simply duplicate the fields into the keywords box, and it will show in the search. i tried it out, and works beautifully. keywords don't show anywhere, but searches will find them. i think this is what we were looking for!

[mueller]

Nice find, but that doesn't solve our problem. For many reasons (one being that it allows us to compartmentalize data) we are using the extra fields for actual content and this cannot be moved into the keywords field. Since the fields are on the actual product page and the products are actually indexed you would think that the extra fields would be indexed, but alas this is not the case. This was confirmed by support.

They did suggest I look into the Google Site Search, but I don't really feel like spending the extra money to index fields that are part of the core product page.

I will continue to explore other options.

[bristweb]

google site search is free...although i'm not sure if i would use it as a search for ecommerce site. it is nice that 3dc understands what is a product page, and what is a category page. google would just see pages

[mueller]

Site search is free, but if you don't want ads for other sites displayed along side the results then you have to pay something like $100 a year.

Good point on 3DC understanding the difference between product and information pages. Just another reason not to use a 3rd party app.

[SarahInc]

Hmm...thanks for the post of that tutorial. I wish I would have known about the keywords earlier. I thought that it worked as meta tag. Blah.

[mueller]

Just to close the loop on this thread. I believe 3DC is going to have these fields cataloged in the new version when it is released. In the mean time they offered to have the fields I needed indexed to the search. Since it is only really two fields we are using the cost was minimal and the work was done in 1 day. The search is still lightning fast and everything works as it should.

If you need this now, I would contact 3DC and get a quote based on the fields you need and if you can wait until the next release then that may be the route to go.