Search system

This topic contains 11 replies, has 3 voices, and was last updated by  Matthew 4 years, 8 months ago.

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  • July 24, 2019 at 2:10 pm #499372

    Matthew
    Lifetime Member
    Post count: 178

    Hi folks, I have a number of listings that are car parks, however if I search on my website for ‘Car parks’, the car park listings are literally at the bottom of the pile (on page 4).

    The car park listings have the tag ‘car parks’ applied but they are not returned.

    What can I do to ensure the system returns these car park results when the term ‘car parks is being used?

    This is the car parks search:

    https://www.marketharborough.com/search/?geodir_search=1&stype=gd_place&s=car+parks&snear=&sgeo_lat=&sgeo_lon=

    And this is a relevant listing that appears on page 4

    https://www.marketharborough.com/places/leicestershire/market-harborough/car-parks/springfield-street-car-park/

    any thoughts?

    July 24, 2019 at 5:59 pm #499423

    Alex Rollin
    Moderator
    Post count: 27815

    A search for ‘car park’ is finding results in the title and those results are more what you are looking for, I think.

    ‘car parks’ is only in the tag and so the results are ranked as less relevant.

    I will flag your question for the developers in case they have anything else to add.

    July 24, 2019 at 6:06 pm #499427

    Matthew
    Lifetime Member
    Post count: 178

    Thanks Alex, actually though, if you look at the listing link the term Car Park (singular) is in the title, its also in the tag.

    If the term ‘Car Parks’ (plural) were in the title this would help I am sure.

    So the search engine isn’t sophisticated enough to see the link between singular and plural terms.

    So there is room for improvement.

    Can we adjust the weight that the Tags have in terms of affecting exposure in search? As these are used in package specification, if they could carry more influence that would be useful in selling packages with more tags.

    July 25, 2019 at 11:30 am #499528

    Stiofan O’Connor
    Site Admin
    Post count: 22956

    We have a task open for plurals, i have added this post to it, we will update you here when we make progress.

    Stiofan

    July 25, 2019 at 11:36 am #499530

    Matthew
    Lifetime Member
    Post count: 178

    Great, thanks – looking forward to it, that will be a big help in improving the effectiveness of the search system.

    August 19, 2019 at 11:29 am #503664

    Matthew
    Lifetime Member
    Post count: 178
    This reply has been marked as private.
    August 20, 2019 at 1:56 pm #503951

    Stiofan O’Connor
    Site Admin
    Post count: 22956

    Hi Matthew,

    This is not a GD or a WP issue, its just a database issue, try searching google for “SQL search plurals”….

    There are only really a few solutions to the issue and none are perfect, some DB’s systems will try to handel it with a fultext search but this is great for a DB of a few hundred listings, but will really slow things down for a large DB. The only real way to solve this is manually, we can build a database of plurals and what they might also mean, such as:

    "restaurants" => array("restaurant"),
"children" => array("child","kids"),

    As you can imagine its not a easy task or one that would would suit all directories. That being said, this is likely the solution we will end up implementing.

    Thanks,

    Stiofan

    August 20, 2019 at 2:10 pm #503956

    Matthew
    Lifetime Member
    Post count: 178
    This reply has been marked as private.
    August 20, 2019 at 2:23 pm #503959

    Stiofan O’Connor
    Site Admin
    Post count: 22956

    As I say its only the sixth returned listing here that relates to an ‘Indian Restaurant’ I can’t understand why the others are being returned as they don’t include the word ‘indian’.

    Search works on a score based system, many points are given for one of the search terms being in the title, which “Restaurant” is for the first 5.

    Stiofan

    August 20, 2019 at 3:45 pm #503987

    Matthew
    Lifetime Member
    Post count: 178

    Thanks for clarifying. Can we dictate how the scoring works?

    Also, I checked with ‘SearchWP’ a 3rd party Search system regarding the issue of plurals. They say “Yes SearchWP as a stemming option which takes care of plurals”

    I would prefer not to have to increase annual expenditure on addition software licenses (as as it stands I may struggle to break even this year for this site).

    But I am thinking that I may have no choice but to use a 3rd party system such as this, do you think it could be integrated into GD?

    August 21, 2019 at 10:13 am #504132

    Stiofan O’Connor
    Site Admin
    Post count: 22956

    Stemming is just exactly what i suggested we do above…

    Stiofan

    August 21, 2019 at 1:42 pm #504160

    Matthew
    Lifetime Member
    Post count: 178
    This reply has been marked as private.
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