Product Search Results

How do I make my search results better

[stroudtx]

I have a search feature on my asp vb site. I use mysql db, so I when a user enters a search I split the search into individual words and then try and find them in the data.

One problem is when someone searches for widget they might get products with widgeted in them. I could append a space on it, but it the last word in the sentence was widget, it wouldn't pick it up. Of course then I could append a space to the result to take care of that possibility. What a pain though.

The other more significant problem is the sigular vs. plural. Someone recently searched for widgets, and we carry several of them but since they used the plural form of the word, they got no results. If I truncate the "s" form the search tern, then I could not add an space per the above example.

Therefore, do you have any suggestions on how I can get better resutls on our site?

Thanks

Mike

[edited by: lorax at 12:50 pm (utc) on Jan. 16, 2006]
[edit reason] widgetized and removed company from sig [/edit]

[watercrazed]

It sounds like you need a better search module, for onsite searches singluar and pural requests should be handled the same.

[watercrazed]

Sorry in my first reply I thought you were using a built in or third party solution.

And in fact that would be my recommendation. For a database of any size a quality search facility is not a small undertaking. And they are not that expensive.

[DryFire]

Does anyone have a good php product search script that they would recommend? We are considering adding product search to our website… We have seen some that spider a site and the use gathered information for the keyword database. Those would work nicely for an informational website with lots of text, but they wouldn’t work for our site. What we need is a search script where we can assign certain keywords to various products and then have it display those products when a customer searches on any variation of those keywords (widget / widgets / widgetes… etc.)