Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

The Smart Search from alteredCart is a true ‘Hybrid’ search that utilizes multiple search technologies in one easy to use search engine specially designed to work with the X-Cart shopping cart system.

Many customers might be leaving your site because they are misspelling a word, using a plural word form, searching for the wrong word, or even entering the query in an order which causes 0 results. The Smart Search was designed to overcome all of these common problems, and help guide your customers to the products they are looking for.

The Smart Search makes it easy for you customers to quickly find what they need by utilizing these search technologies:

• Spell Checking
• ‘Did You Mean…?’ feature (similar to Google)
• Relevant Result Order
• Boolean Searches
• Automatic Similar Search Suggestions
• Easy to use Advanced Search
• Index Based Searching
• Stop Words
• Automatic Extended Results using Query Expansion
• Custom Stemming algorithm to aid in both singular and plural forms of words
• Optimized for English, and works with all western character languages
• Multiple Search technologies combined for a ‘Hybrid’ search and flexible query requirements

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Wow, this looks great. Got a few questions:
- Does this addon / mod also support multi-language stores?
- Which versions are supported? 4.0.X / 4.1.X ?
- Does it use language variables?
- What will the price be?

Thanks.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

The Smart Search:
- Supports multiple language stores
- Is compatible with versions 4.0.x and 4.1.x
- Uses all Smarty language variables on the customer side (it can easily be translated to any language).

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

_Looks smart, how much modding is required on this one? I noticed the page uses _search.php instead of search.php suggesting it's pretty much self contained?

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Yes it is fully self contained and doesn't require any PHP changes. There are only three required template edits to display the search page, search input field, and admin menu.

There are other optional steps to automate the indexing, and customize the display.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Looks good.

Does it search Additional Fields?? In particular will it find Dickins Christmas Carol from the search phrase "Christmas Dickins" where "Dickins" ONLY appears in the Author field?

... or if you know a search routine that can do this, I'd really appreciate it.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

By default the Smart Searches the titles, descriptions, and keywords. However, it could be customized to search any fields.

Even without a modification the Smart Search would return 'Dickins Christmas Carol' if you searched for 'Christmas Dickins'. It would also display a ▒Did You Mean Christmas Dickens?▓ (as long as the word Dickens is found on your site).

The search returns the most relevant results at the top. If the word 'Christmas' is in the title it is likely the product would be very near the top, depending on how many other products have the word Christmas and Dickins in the title.

Smart Move From AlteredCart :: Did You Mean ... a great addon? Oh Yeah!
 

=D> Congratulations with this new and fantastic addon Bill, I love it! :D/

The speed is incredible compared to the default X-Cart search and customers will find something all the time.
Just playing with Smart Search is a joy by itself, it's really amazing.

Without a doubt the best addon I've found until now (and I have found and installed a lot ...) 8-O

>> You can't go wrong with this one; imo a must have! I'm sure it will be a great success.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

It is about damn time someone wrote a decent search for X-Cart! Nice job Bill. Looks to be well worth the price IMHO.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Has any one use this on site which have more than 5000 products ?

how was the results ? accuracy & time taken for indexing ? Also it's putting high load on server while indexing & searching ?

The answers of above questions will sure help me to buy this product.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

The Smart Search was tested on stores with over 5,000 products and over 10,000 unique words and most searches take less than 1 second to return. As with any program if your site is sluggish, the search is going to be sluggish. If basic MySQL page take 5-10 seconds to load on your site the Smart Search is going to take 5-10 seconds to complete a search.


The results are generated based on their relevancy. For example, if you search for 'shoe', the more often the word shoe is in the title and description of a product the closer it is to the top of the results.

The indexing is a moderately intensive process. It is important to remember because of the index the search is faster because the CPU and SQL intensive functions/queries only need to be run once for each search word. It takes about 1 minute per 1,000 words to build the search database.

The Smart Search is highly configurable with settings to control how complex the searches will be depending on your server. If you are on a slow server you can turn the spell check/suggest accuracy to 'Medium', or 'Low' to speed up your searches. Also, individual portions of the search can be turned on or off to reduce the MySQL and CPU cycles if they are not needed.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Are extra fields searchable?

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

I am using Smart Search on a multi language site
It works great!
I really recomend this product!

Jerry

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Thanks Jerry. Glad to hear you are happy with your purchase.


Extra fields are not searched by default. The Smart Searches the titles, descriptions, and keywords. However, it could be customized to search any fields, but this would be on a site by site basis.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Customized, as in we have the source and can modifiy it? Or, do we need to request this before buying? For instance, I always add searching the SKU and productid.

Is the indexing done once a day? Customizable? Cronable?

I'm on 4.0x and will eventually upgrade to 4.1x. Are upgrades included?

Can you direct link to searches?

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

The major functions are encrypted but the main files are not. Depending on how you are looking to integrate the search you might or might not be able to integrate changes. For example you could add fields to the advanced search page and then process them through the search page and add them to the results.


The indexing is done manually, or you can set it up as a cron.


All of the alteredCart products, including the Smart Search, are now designed to be 4.0 and 4.1 compatible in the same package. When you upgrade to X-Cart 4.1 the Smart Search will automatically configure itself to run on the newer version.


Yes.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Bill - I'm close to purchasing your new program. If I have Firetank's Advanced Instant Product Search mod already installed will it be difficult to disable that so that your mod takes over all the search function? In other words, do you think I can install your program myself if I have Firetank's mod working right now? Or would I be better off having you do the installation to make sure it's done correctly?

Thanks.
Jeff

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Because they use different technologies, there shouldn't be any conflicts. However the Smart Search and Advanced Instant Product Search input templates will need to be combined for the two products to work happily together (and so there is only one search field).

If you are pretty good with HTML and JavaScript you could probably cut, copy and paste the necessary Smart Search code into the existing instant search field template. If you do not know HTML I would definitely order the installation.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

I'm ready to buy but would like to know if it is easily modded to also search productId and SKU.

This is super easy in the standard x-cart search b/c I can mod the SQL query. Not sure what is available for this mod. If it's not already part of the standard SmartSearch, can it be added?

Thanks

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Search by SKU and productid are going to be included in the next update. It will be available as early as tomorrow.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

excellent, you rock!

are upgrades included? or do i need to wait for the new release?

this looks great, been waiting for something like this since v3.x!

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Upgrades are free for the within the same X-Cart branch. As long as you are using 4.0 or 4.1 you will be good (so you will be good for a while).

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Hi guys,

Following is my review for smart search:


I purchased the smart search script 2 days go.

Intallation went very smoothly. I got around 6500 products & it just took 45 mintute time by Smart Search to index the entire database.

There was small issue but it was promptly resolved by developer Bill Brewer.

I was facing lot's of complaint from my customers that even though I got so many products the default search was not helping them out to find exact product quickly but now due to Smart Search's features like "Did you Mean ? " & "Similar Search Phrases" I am sure that will able to find products quickly.

I highly recommend this product if some one has more than 100 products.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Thanks, we are ordering this today. Do you know where the updates will be posted?

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

The productcode (SKU) and productid's are now included in the search. You will not need to update to get these functions.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Thanks ordered, will install tonight!

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

OK, script appears to hang at:


After I get this figured out, what cron task should I use?


All we need now is a good spell checker mod. The 'Similar Search Phrases' sure points out the misspellings.....
Thanks!

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

The rebuild can take a couple of minutes (it can seem like it stopped). If the spell checking and similar search phrases are working than the database was built correctly. If you are having trouble please send an email to support@alteredcart.com and I will take a look for you.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

thanks, i got it to work on a different PC. Seems like on my Vista box IE would timeout but with a different XP pc, it didn't timeout. the process took about 30 minutes to complete.

I'd like to set this up as a cron. Do you know how i can pass in 'mode=rebuild&lang=US' to command line php?

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

We bought Smart Search from AlteredCArt three days ago but only today we have time to install it.
And works perfect. In Romanian language too (one of my biggest concerns was that will not work properly in other languages than English).


We have about 200 products and indexing took almost 5 minutes with 2000 words.

You can see it working on www.FunGift.ro - the biggest Romanian gift shop (and that is not shameless self prmotion :) ).

Tahnk you AlteredCart fot that mod.. we will buy it for another store of us for sure.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

This mod is absolutely the best thing to hit XCart! We have about 1500 products, and after a small MySQL bug was squashed by the developers we are rocking.

I encourage everyone to get this search engine for the site!

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

I've tried the demo out, and everything seems to work great. The one issue I see, and I realize this may not be an issue for very many of you, is that it doesn't seem to search for categories or use the categories even as keywords for the products that are listed within them.

For example: Using the demo and searching for toys brings up nothing, even though there are toys in the store listed under the path Games & Toys > Toys.

It would be great if it listed the items under this category, and even better if it listed the category itself as an option. I'm not sure if there is a technical hurdle in doing this (I'm a noob - maybe it's even an option in the mod?) but it would be an important feature for me (and perhaps a few others)... any chance of seeing this addition?

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

This mod works great!! Highly recommend for any store with a large number of items. Finally customers can find what they want :)

Bill was very helpful and updated the latest version so that the database rebuild can be cron'd.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Good Suggestion. The Smart Search now includes a Related Categories feature that displays the categories that match a search term.

Additionally, a tag cloud was added to display the top 60 words of the search results product descriptions.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Even better!!!! This works great and shows category results that match the search string.

If you have CDSEO, change the following in smart_search.tpl to use cdseo links vs. categoryids:


to



A+, best mod out there!

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

This is a incredible mod which is a-must-have for every store!
Implementing it is easy with the included instructions and furthermore, Bill replies fast if you have any questions.

Highly recommended for stores which don't want to lose customers because they can't find anything!

Jerrad :D

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Wow... I thought it was good before, but now you're telling me that you actually listened to my feedback and improved the mod within a week? Simply awesome.

Thank you for the great mod - I'll be buying it soon!

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Has anyone customized/templated this to match their site yet? Just wondering if I can see it and hear your thoughts on how easy (or difficult) the process was...

Thanks!

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

Sure, it's easy (and documented) how to take your existing template file (products_t.tpl) and modify it for Smart Search. You have to add 3 blocks of code. It's well documented in the install instructions.

Re: Smart Search from alteredCart :: Spell Checking, Did You Mean? and More.
 

After incorrectly implementing the upgrade to the newest version, I have it back working wonderfully now! I must say that I am absolutely amazed and how good this code is. It is truly an absolute joy!

Well done Bill!