Q:
When I type in a search with a few words - how come some results show higher than others?
A:
The way the search works — it'll put more "weight"/priority on search results that match the exact words you're searching for.
Eg. if you search Red Dog Blanket — the first results will match all 3 words.
Then it'll display second to that — results that contain some of the keywords you're searching for — but not necessarily all of them.
So in the example above — if some products have "red" and "dog" in their names and descriptions — but not "blanket" — then they'll display secondary to whole phrase matches.
HOWEVER: If an item has more instances of the same keyword in its description — it'll be ranked higher.
Eg. if you have a product that has the word "blanket" listed 3x in its name and description — it'll show up higher in the results than another product with "blanket" only listed once in its name and description.
After all of that, further results will be displayed that match only single words out of all the keywords you've searched — so eg. products that have ONLY "red" or ONLY "blanket" etc.
LIMITATIONS:
Partial Word Matching: While our system does allow for partial word searches (searching only a few letters in a word) it only matches based on the start of a word. Going back to the example above with "Red Dog Blanket" - you can search "Blan" and it will return "Red Dog Blanket" as "blan" is the first 4 letters in the word.
However if you tried to search "lank" - it won't return Red Dog Blanket - because the term searched only exists "inside" the word.
Minimum Character Limit: Search terms must have a minimum of 3 characters, or more. This is a limitation of how the database and PHP system works and is not unique to Webninja's systems.
PLEASE NOTE: as Web Ninja has allowed for quite a few customisations on several sites we host, everyone's individual results may vary a bit, especially as some sites use far more fields for keyword results than just the product name, product number and description.
Future Updates to Webninja's Search: Our developers are always on the look-out for ways to improve and enhance our systems. One of those areas is the search engine - however there are numerous considerations to account for as search affects so many areas across the system. The developers are working on a project to help implement a 3rd party search that will return results more intuitively based on what's typed, as well as being able to more easily preview products based on search terms as they're being typed.
At this point in time we do not have an ETA when this update will be applied.