[starwest]

Originally Posted by wjbrewer

Hello.

This sounds like a problem with the 4 letter MySQL word limit, which would cause the incorrect results for 'tea', and 'Pau'. You can edit this by changing (or adding) this to the etc/my.cnf file:

ft_min_word_len=2

or

ft_min_word_len=3

--

Also, the Smart Search uses a natural language search. What this does is assign every word a value, and score this in relation to other words. Basically, rare words are scored higher than common words and product results are based on:

1. Word frequency.
2. Word placement (a word in the title is worth more than a word in the description).

So if you search for 'Chai Tea', the first results with be:

1. Products with both words in the title
2. Products with a single word in the title and both words in the description.
3. Products with both words in the description.
4. Products with a single word in the description.

And all based on word value and density. So if the word tea is used 10 times in a description this will rank above one that uses the work 8 times.

I hope all of this makes sense.

Hi Bill,

That all made sense, but unfortunately I had to wait until now to make the change you suggested (my host would not make it in the shared environment, but now that isn't an issue). I do have a follow up question re:relevancy though.

On a multiple term search, does Smart Search score products which contain the words as a phrase higher than those that do not? In other words, would a search for the terms 'green tea' score a product named 'gunpowder green tea' higher than 'green chai tea' if all other factors were equal?