Searching short descriptions only

[Magic_Dude]

Hi Guy's

I’m looking for some help improving the search function on my site http://www.dudethatscoolmagic.co.uk

Here’s a simple example. If you visit the site and search for “Invisible Deck” (it’s a magic trick), I’d expect anything with the word invisible and deck in the title to rank highest. You’ll see from the results that whilst #1 result is correct, most of the others results displayed are in my opinion, fairly irrelevant. I may be wrong but from what I can understand, the Actinic search tool basis its results on keywords found within both the full and short product descriptions. I can understand the point of this but personally, I’d like for it NOT to search the full description. Any suggestions on how to achieve this?

[leehack]

Settings > search settings are where the default search settings can be controlled, have a look in there at your options, pretty sure the description field is one you can toggle on/off.

[Magic_Dude]

Sadly not. I have spoken with Actinic support about this (they’ve told me to come here) they can’t offer a solution and they’ve added what I’d like to achieve to the “wish list”.

[NormanRouxel]

I just love "can't be done". One possible workaround that will work if you don't use Extended Info Pages is:

a) Put your product description text into the Extended Information / Text field instead of General / Full Description.

b) Edit your Products Layout(s) and replace variable ProductDescription with ExtendedInfoText.

c) In Settings / Search Settings / Search Options, uncheck Index Extended Product Info.

If you have an existing site up and running, it should be possible to use an Access query on ActinicCatalog.mdb / Product table to move all the existing text from columns Full description to sExtendedInfoText.

[Magic_Dude]

Thanks Norman, this makes total sense and is a great solution, the only problem is that I do currently use the extended info pages. Do you have any other suggestions?

[Mike Hughes]

The real difficulty here is that the search index is created in the desktop application so it's not obvious how it could be changed in the scripts. (Unless the search index also stores the source of the keyword which I don't think it does)

The main things I can think of are:

1. Use the SPP convertor to change to Single Product Pages and then use Norman's suggestion above.

2. Try and break the indexer. You can embed HTML into the product descriptions and it could be that changing the text to HTML or some other form of obfuscation might stop it from being indexed.

Mike

[leehack]

Another workaround possibility is to create your own new variable, "AltProductDescription", make sure this variable is not searchable. Move the contents of your products description field into this and empty the system field and then add your new variable to the product layout to replace the standard one. This text will then show on a product layout, but it will not be indexed.

Formatting of the text could be a stumbling block if you need paragraphs but is also fixable.