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Improve search results in 3.X version

Archived Jirka Menion Mlavec 9 years ago

Hello guys,


version 3.x brings a lot improvements in all possible places, but I have to say that "searching", one of most essential features of every complex software, is really tragic, sorry to say it.


In search results are probably all possible topics, but if there is more results then, lets say "one page", it is really hard to find required topics. So what I see that mainly miss is some clever sorting logic of results.


Nice example:


Try to search these words "offline db POI" on our help desk: http://help.locusmap.eu/search/offline%20db%20POI


You will get 258 results of topics that contain one, or two or three of above words sorted by uknown unlogic mechanism. But, we also have at least three topics that has exactly this phrase in it's name


http://help.locusmap.eu/topic/how-to-choose-poi%C2%B4s-offline-db-poi

http://help.locusmap.eu/topic/poi-visibility-offline-db-poi

http://help.locusmap.eu/topic/poi-onoff-offline-db-poi


We have also a topics that has a lot more votes then 1 or 2 as first topics in result has. And so on.


Please guys, give this feature a while and improve search results. It should be useful also for nice feature that suggest similar topics where are also sometimes missing some essential topics. Thank you for consideration!

Replies (5)

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Hello Jirka,

in newly launched 3.2 release we've significantly improved search and this is one of the main reason to move to 3.2

Once updated, please let us know your thoughts, as you should notice the difference and search is more accurate - both global and when showing results of similar topics

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Ah good news, thank you.


We still get small warning about need of Apache engine 5.4. Because of a few more services we run there, still wait if update or not. But this argument and also because I already paid for your nice work for another year, this makes a good reason to risk it.


perfect, I'll let you know, thank you!

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Make sure to have PHP 5.4. In our 3.2 release we've done more thsn 150 changes, so it's really worth it. We'll make official announcement this week and will release 3.2.1

so will be waiting on your test.

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One more important moment regarding search that minimum word length must be 4 char.

All words that are less than 4 characters will be omitted and will not included into search query.

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Update on second apempt done, perfect,


Unfortunately I'm currently not able to say if search is better or not, but during next days of using, I'll for sure report you any special search issues that may happen.


For now, I still think there is a place for improvement. Because search for words "offline db poi" still return no useful results, probably because of limitation Paul said. Isn't there any way to force using of all words? For exactly search for "offline+db+poi"? "DB Poi" is name for feature we use in Locus and it is quite common term of searching.


Thanks for consideration.

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Jirka,

So, if you change ft_min_word_len directive to your own value you also need to change System_Service_FullTextSearch::MIN_SEARCH_WORD_LENGTH constant to that value.

By the way we don't recommend to change it in the fact that you will get a lot of garbage in the search results.

For example:

when you want to find word "apple" you'll also can find "application" and "apply".

Therefore we have increased word length limit up to 4 char.

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Jirka,

You'll find this class constant in /application/3.2/modules/system/services/FullTextSearch.php

Maybe you can improve search results in your specific case.

Wish you a successful experiment!

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