CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

We are glad to announce our new service “CloudSearch”.

Enterprise-class search capabilities such as autosuggest and spelling correction provide a real boost to search conversion rates. CloudSearch offers you full support for these features without need to purchase a dedicated server ($100+/mo) and installation of any special software ($500+)
Unleash the power of enterprise-class search technologies even when on shared hosting plans!

Here are some key features:

Search as you type
Search results are presented instantly, before the user is even done typing.

Search hit highlighting
Search results show the exact portions of text where the word or phrase matching the search query occurs, with the words matching the query emphasized by background highlighting.

Real-time suggestions
The user can stop short of typing the entire word or phrase at any moment and just choose one of the suggested options.

Automatic spelling corrections
Even if a word has been misspelled, the customer can still find the product by using a closely related option from the presented list.

Relevant search results
Based on Apache Solr, the industry leading open source enterprise search platform, CloudSearch recognizes word forms and provides other advanced full-text search capabilities.

Amazingly fast
The CloudSearch widget in your store interacts directly with our cloud without increasing load on your server.

SaaS architecture
High performance and feature updates are available automatically without the need to upgrade your client software.

Sleek Ajax GUI widget.
CSS-based layout that can be tweaked to fit any design.

Compatible with major browsers
Internet Explorer 7 or later, Chrome, Safari (including iOS), Firefox.

Subscription-based plans.

30-day free trial period.


Please try our demo at https://cloudsearch.x-cart.com/demo/

Feel free to ask any questions.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

X-Carters! Try to use 1-month trial right now:

download kit: http://cloudsearch.x-cart.com/static/cloudsearch-xcart-4.4.x-4.5.x.tgz
manual: http://help.x-cart.com/index.php?title=X-Cart:CloudSearch

We look forward to get any feedback or comments

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Great job!

1) Your success in selling depends on price. An instant/quick search solution costs maximum 200 Euro to 3rd parties developers. As a suggestion you can give some special offers to those who host XC on your servers. In my opinion hosting is a little bit expensive.

2) What fields inside the DB uses this solution to provide results? As I see it is product name and product description.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

ADDISON

Thanks for your interest!

1) The main difference between generic 3rd party developers' quick/instant search and our solution is that we're not limited in the technologies we use. Among others, we use enterprise-class search library and server (Apache Lucene and Solr) which give both great speed and accuracy (in contrast to traditional php/mysql-based search engines). We provide this quality for a decent monthly fee which is not comparable to costs that may be involved in building and deploying some similar solution from scratch.

2) Yes, product title field and both descriptions are used in the current version.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Could this be expanded searching in Extra Fields or Product Options? Let me give you an example, I am looking for a tent in red color, I will search for words tent red. The word tent could be found in product description or product title, but what about red? What I am suggesting is accuracy.

Let's say I am looking for a manufacturer and shoe, typing adidas shoe. Based on product title and description the accuracy will not provide good results, except I am creating this from the very beginning when adding the product. So, some rules must be applied.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Yes, these features are in our development plan.
By the way, have you tried CloudSearch on your store?

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

The power of such of feature stands in accuracy and different searching scenarios. Also how it advices the customer or showing the best results.

I will try CloudSearch with XC 4.5.2. As behavior it seems to be the same like Instant Search for LC3.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Instant Search for LC3 will be replaced by CloudSearch module in the near future as the latter provides much more features.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

We are pleased to announce that CloudSearch extended the way it indexes and searches your data. Now when it searches for products it takes into account categories, manufacturers, product options and extra fields.

You can download free 30-day trial here

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Based on your demo, can I use CloudSearch to get the right product searching for "shirt storm blue"? Normally it should generate one result Binary Mom, storm blue is one of the color.

The product is great but a little bit expensive per month fee when having more than 5000 products. Hosting also is expensive comparing with others. You should think to some offers to be more competitive.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

If you type "shirt storm blue" on the demo you will get exactly one result in the popup.
As for the hosting the point is that you can use CloudSearch on any hosting and it will show the same performance everywhere.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Very nice mod but just too expensive for 100+ products. Besides charging per nr of products in the store is too 20th century. Users are prepared to be billed monthly for hosting, CRM, ERP, Support/Live Chat packages, even e-commerce hosted solutions, but not for an instant search mod. In my opinion you should be satisfied with charging a flat fee of $150 or even $250, that way probably you could convert 10-20% of your customer base quickly. Most instant search mods are $50-150 and do the job quite nicely, although they surely don't have all the eyecandy yours does and are probably not as precise delivering results.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

About prices, I have to agree they are expensive. Most of the stores have >5000 products. You have to contact QT for a quote in this case.

Even it is fast, any other solution like this one for maximum price of 200 Euro but with a similarly accuracy, will be take in consideration. Just because you pay only one time and don't stress you have to pay monthly as you said in too many directions.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Yep I agree, nice, but way too expensive. I have 30,000 products and the price just on 5000 products is ridiculous.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

I have just installed the trial version of cloud search xcart module and it is working fine. Then after I uploaded 10 product in a category and when I search for those 10 product by putting his name etc then they are searchable anymore. All of the products are displaying but after installed this module I can't see the latest products. Please let me know what kind of problem it is and how to fix it. Please response me soon.

Thanks

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Thank you for using our service!
Re-indexing happens once a day, so you need to wait for changes to take effect.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

I've installed Cloud Search trial version and I keep getting this error (where xyz is my sitename):
Fatal error: Call to undefined function func_chmod_file() in /home/xyz/public_html/modules/Cloud_Search/func.php on line 237

Is anyone else having a problem getting it to work?
--Using version 4.1.10
Thanks.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

At the moment, CloudSearch is only supported for X-Cart 4.4.x-4.5.x, but package for older software versions will be released next week. Please stay tuned.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Hi guys,

CloudSearch for X-Cart 4.1.x-4.3.x is now available in File Area and also via this link. Please give it a try.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

I would like to install it on my localhost. Can your software work with a localhost?

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

No you can't install it on localhost since the site should be available from the internet to be indexed by our server.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

I installed the trial version on my localhost then I did an uninstall. Everything went fine.

Now in frontend I get a JavaScript window with the following message: CloudSearch was not installed correctly. Please re-install CloudSearch.

Normally after uninstall this should not be happening.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Thank you for submitting that. The fix will be included in next version of the module. For now you can just disable the module in the admin area.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

We would like to announce that the prices for using CloudSearch have been lowered! You can find all the info at http://www.x-cart.com/cloud-search.html

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Even more, we do not just make our prices lower, we also improved the plans and extended the level of available product on Silver and Gold plans. Review it here: http://www.x-cart.com/cloud-search.html

ADDISON, really thank for your review :)

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

What happens when we do a quick search for: mam binary? There is a product called Binary Mom. Mam is not Mom. In such of situations the software should show some alternatives. In this moment CS cannot give any alternative for mam binary.

A very important part of this feature is accuracy. For example searching for "aple" should direct as suggestion to "apple". There are lots of instant search modules for other shopping carts which can deal with syntax errors. You can associate in the back end words for them like apple = aple. As I see CS cannot deal with it.

In a week I hope to provide you a full report about the instant search feature after testing a lot of the solutions I found on the internet, different shopping carts. If we have to pay for a service or for a module I would like to be one of the best.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Another two marketing advices:

I hope you could take in consideration to give a reward as a discount for CloudSearch to those who also host their shopping carts on QT webservers.

This service in the next versions of XC could be offered for free, maybe for a limited number of products and paid for exceeding this limit. Being a free service you can increase the amount paid for a license.

Anyway for the moment I am glad you are listening the community comments.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Our automatic spelling corrector gives quite good results most of the time but of course it can't be as smart as a human, just because it's automatic (especially when dealing with short words). Thank you for your suggestion, I think a feature to manage a custom list of spelling correction rules is a great idea to include in the next version of module ;-)

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

@NikitaP - think about XC is a multi-language shopping cart. I saw some solutions coming with a list for English. This is not good for those who don't use shopping carts for English language. Because you have a SaaS service, a shared/common custom list of spelling corrections between users should be evaluated being taken in consideration. Or you can have a list for every language avoiding any confusion.

I will report this in my article about instant search too. And it is not the only improvement.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Just installed it on a 4.5.0 site, installation was successful, but there were no difference when i perform a search.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Is the module active in Admin area Settings -> Modules?

"After the CloudSearch integration module installation has been completed, the module needs to be enabled in your store"

Here is the help page for CloudSearch feature: http://help.x-cart.com/index.php?title=X-Cart:CloudSearch

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Yes it is

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Is it a localhost or a license webserver? CloudSearch is not functioning on localhost.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

it's on server , i will PM you url

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Normally if it is online it should function great for 30 days.

You are using a theme from TheXCartStore.

1) Hope you are not using also their Predictive Search, which could create a conflict. Checking your input text box you have the following container:

<div class="search-substring">
<input type="text" name="posted_data[substring]" class="search-box text" value="" id="TXS_PS_search" autocomplete="off"/>
</div>

2) It could be a problem with this template. Personally I will try install by myself, manually this module. In this way I am allowed to place correctly the code inside php/tpl files. Do an uninstall and then install the code manually based on installation files.

I guarantee you that with any of XC themes comes, CloudSearch will function great. It is a template problem.

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Just take a look to http://cloudsearch.x-cart.com/demo/home.php

Here is the container for CloudSearch:
Make a comparison with yours ...

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

Very impressive.
X-Cart product that simply works out of the box. What a pleasant surprise!

How does CloudSearch calculate number of "products" for the license? If an item comes in 4 sizes and 8 colors (options/variants) is that 32 products, or is it one product with options/variants?

DO disabled products count?
DO hidden but available for sale count?
IS there a countdown clock on the days left in my trial?
IS there a config that will tellme how many products cloudsearch thinks i have?

Thanks for clarifying this...

J

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

If I add/delete/edit products, how do I tell the server that I need a re-indexing?

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

I was hoping Cloudsearch was smart enough to recognize words that are close - such as

lip stick -> lipstick
eye liner -> eyeliner
or vice versa
eyeshadow -> eye shadow

but it's sitting there pretty stupid when a customer types in close matches.

Is there a procedure to establish these exceptions? Google has all of them. So does Altered Cart SmartSearch. Hoping CLoudSearch will allow this -- or am I jumping the gun -- my site hasn't yet been indexed? Or has it? I just enabled cloud search a few minutes ago. Oops, I used two words... will that search?

Re: CloudSearch service for X-Cart has been released
 

carpeperdiem,

Thank you for your interest.

Disabled and hidden products do not count. Products with multiple options/variants count as one product.

The countdown clock as well as displaying other subscription info is on our development plan.

You can see actual indexable product count via link like http://cloudsearch.x-cart.com/demo/cloud_search_api.php?method=info (it's the link for our CloudSearch demo). It outputs json but it's pretty easy to see number of products in the response.

Re-indexation happens every 8 hours.

As for the search experience for a specific store I think it's better to discuss it via PM or in a HelpDesk ticket. At least I need to know which store we are talking about.

As for the exceptions, for now we rely on the stemming features provided by underlying Lucene library. Adding global/per-client exceptions support is also considered as a feature for the upcoming releases.