How to set up search in directory

don't want a botch job

[LittleFrodo]

Sorry if this has appeared before - I did do a search for it - honest!

I am considering setting up a new directory with a business colleague - it's not going to rival Yahoo - but hey it's a niche area so could prove useful and maybe make some money someday.

The one thing that both of us differ on is how to organise the search side of it offer accurate results. These are all hand-reviewed sites - so there will be no spamming issues (hopefully).

We have set up the following fields for the listings within the directory :

Title (e.g. Name of company and site that people would search for)
Description (to include some keywords and search terms)
4 keyword text boxes (for sites to add most common terms they want to target - we feel they should be found under)

It's now about how we run the search and this is where we are a bit flawed. Do we

set up a complex system, of the order :

1.Search each of the fields for exact match - then make that 60% of the final

weighting for the results

e.g. search for John Lewis - rightly so the John Lewis site should come up first

each time (there will be no affiliates in this directory)

2.Then search the text fields for exact matches (ensuring all 4 fields carry the same weight (i.e. no prominence of field 1 over field 4) - then make that say 25% of final weighting for results

3.Search description where it looks for exact match first and offers that 10% weighting

4.Finally search description again for matching all words in any order - 5%

The thinking behind this is that as the exact match for the title carry's say 60% weighting, all the other combined elements cannot supercede this figure and so the rightful site will end up being top!

We are really unsure about number 4 though - maybe it should just find in order but not necessarily together?

The other solution we liked was a simpler version of the above in that you don't allocate a weighting - but we wondered if that might open the results to a bit of inaccuracy in some cases.

Can anyone help with this kind of logic?

[rogerd]

Thinking outside the box (and the parameters of your request) - consider a free hosted search like Atomz.com for up to 500 pages. They have a built-in algo that produces relevant results. The only catch is that there's nothing between "free" and a fairly expensive, full service option.

[CalArch90]

Freefind is worth looking into as well. The professional version is not too unreasonable in terms of price and if you have a small site (less than 500 pages), you can get their service for less than $10 a month.

[jimbeetle]

Or spend a few bucks for something like FDSE and install it onsite.

And, with all of the directory software already out there consider using an off the shelf solution. Many are more than reasonably priced, simple to set up, have full-fledged user interfaces and features you might not have gotten around to thinking about yet.