Showing Search Text on Results page

[BillS]

I'm sure there's an easy way to do this - but I can't find it...

Is there a way to show the Text that was searched for on the Results page?

When I analyse my web logs - it shows people searching and getting a "No matching products were found." message - but, when reviewing these logs I'd like to see what they actually searched for so [maybe] I could rectify the situation...

Thanks,

Bill.

[I-CC]

If you take a look into the Advanced User Guide (avail for download from www.actinic.co.uk download pages) then on approx page 54 provides a means for keeping a log of search terms used on your site.

Hope that helps point you in the right direction.

[BillS]

Yes - thanks - I've done that - but it means I have to cross-compare the web log with the search text log.

I guess what I'd like to see (or rather the end-user to see) instead of 'No matching products were found.' would be something like "Your search for 'xyz products' returned no matches". It would also enable them to see if they actually typed the correct words...

[I-CC]

Ah right, sorry...

Think that would need some parsing through the perl scripts to be honest, although I may be over complicating things.

Maybe someone else has done something similar, but not here I am afraid, sorry.

[BillS]

Does anyone else know if this is possible?

[TraceyG]

Hi Bill,

I've put this through to our development team to see if it would be possible. I'll post back as soon as I hear from them.

[BillS]

Thanks Tracey

[TraceyG]

Hi Bill,

I'm afraid that it is not good news. For you to be able to do this we would need to capture the text entered in the search box in the online session file (not done at the moment) and then have some javascript to retreive this information.

I have added your request to our wishlist.

[zmagyar]

If you really want this then some perl customisation is needed. Just find the line

return ($::NOTFOUND, ACTINIC::GetPhrase(-1, 267));

in your SearchScript.pl file and change the second parameter to your needs. E.g.

return ($::NOTFOUND, sprintf("Your search for '%s' returned no matches", $sSearchStrings));

But to be honest I can't see how would it help on your original problem. You should still cross check the httpd and Catalog logs to find out what your users did look for. Probably it would help if our search log would contain the number of hits.

Regards,

[BillS]

Thanks Tracey. Thanks zmagyar.

unfortunately the $sSearchStrings is NULL if there are no matches. I went back through the perl script and it seems only 'matched' words are passed through...

It would help my original cause. I do have the search strings written out to a seperate text log - but the log analytics tool that Im using displays all the pages as the user saw them - so whilst browsing through a users session it would be useful to see the search phrases (found and not found) so you can see how they moved through your site... it beats x-ref'ing the text log with the iis log files...

At the end of the day - it's no big deal - just a 'nice-to-have'...

Cheers.