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Script needed to slap users.

         

jecasc

9:52 am on Mar 29, 2011 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I spent the last few weeks improving my shopping cart search and only now realized that it was a total waste of time. I integrated a search suggestion feature for example. Works like a charm. The user types in:

brand widget

and in a split second there is the result.

Now one problem remains: I wrongly assumed that users would be looking on their screen when typing. Big mistake. I analyzed this weeks searches and the results are devastating.

People type:

widget brand -
and I can see in the logs that they get perfect results already but they do not stop typing. They just go on and on typing, they type in the weirdest stuff until they get no result at all:

widget brand i need for cleaning my car cheap.

BAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAA.

So what I need now is a script along the following lines: When a user starts typing weird stuff a hand should come out of the screen and slap him left and right in the face until he looks up.

Matthew1980

11:12 am on Mar 29, 2011 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



>>a hand should come out of the screen and slap him left and right in the face until he looks up.

Love it!

Don't you find that with google suggestion search, especially when it already navigates to the first hit on the page. Grr!

Hope you find a decent solution to getting rid of the idot factor!

Cheers,
MRb

caribguy

11:19 am on Mar 29, 2011 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



Awesome post!

I have looked in horror at my logs:

w
wi
wid
wide
wideg
wide
wid
widg
widge
widget
widgetb
widgetbr
widgetbra
widgetbran
widgetbrand

- 0 results

And of course they could have clicked off to the results right after wid...

(off to remove spaces for concatenated queries...)

jecasc

11:51 am on Mar 29, 2011 (gmt 0)

WebmasterWorld Senior Member 10+ Year Member



I wonder if it would be a good idea to simply ignore the keywords once the user has narrowed down the results to a certain threshold.

At least I have a better understanding now of what problems search engines like google face. I always get angry when I search in Google and they do word stemming or ignore keywords I type in, because I carefully choose my keywords before I hit submit.

Now I have to acknowledge: I am part of a very very small minority. Most people simply type in what comes into their head.
And some of them seem to have broken equipment. One of the users clearly has a broken spacebar:
lookingforbrandwidget
brandwidgetredwithwhitestripes