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Hi Stiofan,
I appreciate the time you’re taking to explain. And I have understood everything you’ve been saying. Even though we disagree on the usefulness of sorting UNEXACT results, I understand and agree with your reasons for having GeoDirectory do UNEXACT results. I actually prefer UNEXACT results, but my preference doesn’t really matter. Frankly, neither should yours when you design software for other people to develop sites on top of. I understand everything you’ve said but I can’t understand why you don’t let your customers have the option to enable or disable sort on UNEXACT search results. Even though you don’t feel sort would be useful, your customers, or their customers, might.
BUT….. That’s not why I’m replying for a last time. I’m replying to say, again, that GeoDirectory does not currently use UNEXACT. It uses EXACT. Seriously! That’s what my testing has shown on my own server (the Mexican food example) and that’s what YOUR demo site shows.
Really!
I guess you haven’t checked your own site, even though I’ve already told you this in a previous post. So let me show you…..
Would you agree that if a listing has the two words “food” and “asian” in it, then an UNEXACT search of “asian food” (without the quotes) will find that listing? Or “food asian”?
Here’s a video where I do that exact search on YOUR demo site and it does not find a listing that has both of those words. But if I search for “pan asian” it finds the listing, because those two words appear next to each other exactly like that.
Seriously. Take a look:
Finally, I’ve looked at some of the sites other people have done that you feature in your Demo section. I’ve done searches on them and some appear to use UNEXACT search. So perhaps there is something wrong with the latest release, which I’m assuming is what is running on your demo site and what I downloaded a couple of weeks ago.
Anyway, thank you for responding and your thoughtful reasons. We may not agree but I appreciate your taking the time.
Yeah, I think I’m about to. The last few days I’ve been working with a different piece of directory software and so far it’s doing what I need it to do. Including the sorting!
Ok, thank you.
This makes no sense. You’ve made programming choices that limit functionality for no apparent reason. You’ve got the GD Popular Post Category widget that shows categories everywhere, but is NOT sortable. Then you’ve got the CPT Categories widget (which is sortable by A-Z) but only shows on pages that relate to the Hotels CPT. Oh, and apparently on the hoe page which isn’t really a Hotels CPT related page.
But you don’t have a universal widget that will let you show specific categories that are sortable. I can’t understand why, but I’m definitely noticing a real pattern here with lack of sorting!
I get why Hotels CPT Categories works on the Search results page when searching for Hotels CPT, but not Places CPT. I totally understand that.
But when I click on the “2-star” category (which is a category specific to the Hotels CPT), the resulting category listing page will only show Hotels CPT results. So shouldn’t the Hotels CPT Categories widget show the x-star categories?
In summary….
http://localhost/dev/hotels/ shows Hotels CPT Categories widget content
http://localhost/dev/hotels/2-star/ does NOT show Hotels CPT Categories, even though it’s still a page tied to the Hotels CPT.The sorting thing is becoming a real problem. Maybe not for you, but for me it certainly is. I keep having to work around the inability to sort, trying to find ways to get things working.
While digging through all the GD settings for an answer to another problem, I noticed the following on the Sorting Options tab:
Um…. “search results”? Mistake in the text, or was it something was originally thought about but later decided against?
Is sorting in search technically difficult to program? Or is it more of a philosophical position against it’s usefulness?
Thanks!
Ah, yes. The widget name. So I see there is a CPT categories widget. Not sure how I missed that. It looks like this one will work for me, except it only seems to be working in the GD Home Right Section and GD Search Right Sidebar. It does not work when placed in the GD Listing Right Sidebar. Any ideas how to fix this?
These are the settings:
Here is the result when it works (GD Home & GD Search sidebars):
Here is the result in GD Listing Right Sidebar:
This reply has been marked as private.Ha! I just took a look at tripadvisor and I love the way they do it! The icons really make it clear that they are selectable! I’d say that’s the way to go!
Yeah, that could help, although it seems to do something like that already… I think. For example, if I start to search for Hotels, after I type a few letters I get a list of hotels with “Hotels” sort of hiding in plain sight in the middle of the list:
(“hotel” also makes an appearance on the list at the end, but I think that’s because I’ve searched that word before.)
What if “Hotels could be highlighted at the top of the list in some way? Maybe like this?
Or even more useful could be something like this, where all the various categories are listed and selectable as soon as you click in the search box.
Of course, it could get messy pretty quick if there are lots of different categories. Perhaps a limit to displaying only the most common categories? Or have an option the admin can tick for each category as to whether or not it is included in the suggestion list?
Stiofan,
Thanks for the response. Okay, I see what you mean about TripAdvisor, although after they change the search to a display of a particular category, results are still limited to area defined in the original search and the results are sortable. It would be great if GeoDirectory could do this! GeoDirectory can either limit to an area without sort (by searching on the category name) or allow sort but without limiting to an area (by clicking on the category). It can’t seem to do both.
If I search for “Restaurants” (which does not appear in any of my listings) near “Denver” all three listings categorized as restaurants are returned, but there is no sorting (even though this search is an exact match search).
It really would be very useful to:
Search for Category RESTAURANTS near DENVER, then SORT results BY RATING/PRICE/…..
Regarding the the example SQL string you wrote…. While it’s clear that the example would return non-exact results, that doesn’t seem to be how GeoDirectory works! Even your demo site shows that it’s doing an Exact Match search on multiple words.
In my examples, the same thing happens. To refresh, here are my 3 listings again:
Listing 1 – Authentic stuff at it’s best
Listing 2 – Authentic Mexican at it’s best
Listing 3 – Authentic Mexican stuff at it’s bestSearching for Mexican stuff returns only one result. Isn’t that the result of an Exact Match? And searching for “stuff Mexican” (no quotes) results in 0 records. If GeoDirectory is doing a non-exact search, shouldn’t both of these searches result in 3 records being returned?
You have two types of search, exact and non exact, only exact ones can really be sorted but then you are extreamly limiting your results this is why almost no one does it
I do see that many travel websites don’t allow for sorting on non-exact search results. Non-travel sites (like Amazon) usually offer non-exact sorting. And lots of sites (travel, non-travel) also have filtering, which could be a way to help limit results. (Possible future enhancement?) By the way, AND searches could also be very useful. If I want a restaurant that serves pizza AND alcohol, that’s the search type I’d want to use! Of course, I’d like those results to be sortable too!. 😉
It seems to me that if it’s possible to make search results sortable, then it should probably be an option for site owners to enable/disable. And if enabled, whether or not to sort by a particular criteria is best left up to the end user. At the very least, having a sortable single category list (e.g. Restaurants) that is restricted by an area (e.g. Denver) would be incredibly useful.
Anyway, thanks again for the reply and discussion. I hope you can confirm if the behavior I’m seeing with GeoDirectory search (that it’s doing exact searches, not non-exact searches) is just a bug. From what you’ve written it sounds like it’s supposed to be doing non-exact.
Cheers!
I was trying to figure out how to sort search results and came across this thread. I hope it’s okay that I add a reply.
My understanding is that it is your position that sorting on search results could result in unwanted results to sort to the top of a list. I’d like to argue against this way of thinking about sort.
The ability to sort search results can be VERY beneficial, even if the sort includes some irrelevant results moving to the top. It’s much more of a benefit to at least have the option to sort than to have not option. And with an option to sort, the initial sort order can still be based on Relevance. Furthermore, if an end user doesn’t like the results of changing to another type of sort (for example Price or Rating) they can always switch back to the Relevance sort. Having the option to sort search results does not mean that everyone needs to use that option.
With that said, even TripAdvisor allows sorting. Not for the example you gave, potatoes, but certainly they allow it for Hotels, Restaurants….. If I search for Hotels in Chicago I get this:
So…. while I can’t sort a result for potatoes, I can sort a result for Hotels.
Please consider allowing for sort of search results. Almost all directories allow for search sort.
NEXT…… I believe that the way search was described above in this thread is incorrect. It was stated:
If you search for say “Mexican Food” you would get results for “mexican food”, “mexican” and “food” the search will sort these by relevance as i explained above.
To put it in search terms, it sounds like GeoDirectory uses an OR search…. Except it doesn’t.
I gave this a try and created three listings. The listings had different keywords that I would search:
Listing 1 – Authentic stuff at it’s best
Listing 2 – Authentic Mexican at it’s best
Listing 3 – Authentic Mexican stuff at it’s bestEach of these listings had the tag “food”, so I started by searching on food near Denver to pull up a listing of all three to take a screen grab:
I then searched for the words Mexican stuff. If it’s an OR search (Mexican OR stuff) I should still see all three search results. Here’s what I got:
That’s not right – it’s the result of either an AND search or an EXACT MATCH search.
So is GeoDirectory doing AND searches or EXACT MATCH searches? Searching for stuff Mexican should answer this question.
If it’s an OR search (stuff OR Mexican) it should give 3 results (we already know it won’t).
If it’s an AND search (stuff AND Mexican) it should give 1 result.
If it’s an EXACT MATCH (stuff Mexican) it should give NO results.Here’s what I get:
No results means Geodirectory is using an EXACT MATCH search.
I reviewed the documentation on the search feature (https://wpgeodirectory.com/docs/gd-search/) an there is no mention on how to set a search type (OR, AND, EXACT MATCH). Perhaps this is something that can be addressed? It would be great it power users could search any of those (using AND, OR, and quotes for EXACT MATCH) or if there were radio buttons or something. It could be a perfect addition to the Advanced Search plugin!
FINALLY….. Looping back to the issue of being able to sort search results. As indicated, even TripAdvisor allows sorting of results (within specific types – Hotels, Restaurants….) It would be very valuable to have sort options in GeoDirectory, especially for sites that are listing things like hotels and restaurants. The ability to a search of Hotels in a specific area by rating is invaluable. While there are other ways for users to get to a sortable list without using search, people are trained on using search (and then sorting the results).
Having the option to sort results does not mean that the user needs to use that option, or if they do use it, that they can’t re-sort back to relevance, or that a particular site developer needs to enable the sort option. But it would make GeoDirectory that much more powerful.
Please let me know if I missed something on the type of search that GeoDirectory is doing. Sounds like it should be doing OR searches, but it is clearly doing EXACT MATCH searches. BTW, I tested this on your demo and it too seems to be EXACT MATCH:
Several listings in Philadelphia had either Asian or Food in them. In fact, some non-restaurant listings had the word food in it and when I did a search for “food” the 4th result was for the Sadsbury Woods Preserve, not the most relevant result. And while sorting probably wouldn’t make it any more relevant (unless you could sort on a specific type, like restaurants) it does show that non-sortable search results doesn’t necessarily mean more relevant results.
Anyway, apologies for the length of my post. I’m loving GeoDirectory and hope this is of some help! And if there is some way for me to easily switch to an OR based search I’d like to know.
Thanks!
Thanks for the reply. The site is currently running on a development machine there is no way for me to provide access to it at the moment, but I’ll work on moving it over to an external server. I’ll update this thread once I’ve been able to do that.
Thanks!
Thank you Paolo. I *think* I may have some of the spacing sorted out for the center content, with some changes to a Hueman child theme. Inside of the child theme I created a geodirectory folder and placed a copy of listing-detail.php template.
I commented out the ###### SIDEBAR ON RIGHT ###### section, which removed the listing-detail sidebar in the center content. Then I added the following custom CSS:
#geodir-wrapper-content { width: initial; padding-left: 10px; padding-right: 10px; }This cleaned up the positioning of the center content. However, there are a couple of weird things happening with images. On listings created by the Dummy Content generator, the image rotation displays correctly, like this:
But on listings I’ve created, the image rotation shows thumbnails under the main image, and the main image is showing larger thumbnails:
I can’t figure out why it is only affecting listings that I created. If I ALT-TAB away and back, the main image will then be formatted correctly, but there are still thumbnails under the image:
Of course, the biggest issue is still how to get the Hueman sidebars to appear and fill with the content from the listing-detail sidebar. Hopefully your developers can come up with some snippets fairly easily.
Thanks!
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