AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

If you search for Amco (a manufacturer) you'll get some bowls along with other things...if you search for Amco Bowl you get nothing...what's up?

AC7 search will only find "Amco Bowl" if those two words appear next to each other in your product keywords field. If you have FTS enabled, then the description, name, summary etc are searched as well. But even then, a multi-word search will return only the results that contain "Amco" and "Bowl" immediately next to each other.

It's not as sophisticated as say, Google, where you can enter Amco Bowl and get all the pages that include both the word Amco (somewhere) and Bowl (somewhere).

Huh.... Never noticed this before. That's really screwed up and counter intuitive.

I have another site with another ecomm package. On the other site - termA termB - works as it does on Google. You get anything with either term in it. On my Able site - termA termB - returns nothing.

Perhaps this needs some updating. How many shoppers are leaving because they get zero results for - ipod earbuds - and don't think to search for either ipod or earbuds? In Andy's case, a search for - stainless steel bowls - gets no results. Bad news.

I thought putting a string in quotes forces the phrase. "ipod earbuds" is different than - ipod earbuds - , no?

How does one enable FTS?

Full Text Search is enabled via the Admin Store, Settings page I believe. There are some requirements to be met for FTS to work like your ISP has to enable it in the SQL server. Plus FTS is only available in 7.0.3 running on a SQL 2005 db.

FTS won't solve the issue though - it only expands where the search will look within each product record. It doesn't change HOW the search looks for stuff. It's definitely an improvement over the stock AC7 search, however it still has a long way to go to becoming an effective search tool for a storefront.

When searching text you may use wild card characters * and ? for example try Amco*

Amco* gets zero results on Andy's site. Retail shoppers can't be expected to know to do this, even if it did work. It's 2009, search isn't a new ecomm tool still in developement.

A search for - 40w light bulb - should return results, even if the list is for every product in the light bulb store.
A search for - "40w light bulb" - should return only products with this text string.

Many people search in plurals. - Basket/Baskets - Don't get me started on plurals....

Is there a fix in the works?
.

William brings up very good points. Is there an answer to his question? Thanks.

This is fixed and slated for inclusion in AC 7.0.4

http://bugs.ablecommerce.com/show_bug.cgi?id=8361