AbleCommerce Shopping Cart Software

We have implemented able commerce for a store site v7.x and are experiencing some issues with search. Specifically, we are getting strange results with partial word search in relation to the SKU numbers. This is for the search from the main site (not admin)

For example, if we enter a product with model "55LK520":
1) search for "55LK520" search returns the product as expected.
2) search on "55LK" the product still comes back in search.
3) search on "LK520", no match is returned

Whats also interesting is that from within the Admin page, this example of partial search works just fine.

Has anyone else found a way to get the main site search to behave correctly with partial word search?

The consumer facing simple search typically uses the SQL Full Text Search and that search is a "starts with" search. It also searches the Name, Sku, ModelNumber, SearchKeywords, Summary, Description, and ExtendedDescription fields.

We modified the simple search to use a wild card or LIKE search (*LK520*) but then SQL had to perform a full table scan. And since it is searching all of those fields, the search was taking more time than customers expected. Another option we tried was to implement a separate product code search. Some customers didn't like that option.

Another option is to monitor what people do search for and add those terms to the search keyword field for the product. In your example case, you would add "LK520" to the "55LK520" search keyword field. Over time your search keywords will get better and so will the search.

Getting AbleCommerce to search like Google isn't going to happen, so right now it seems like the options are balancing performance and results.

thank you for the information. My developer told me that it was using the "starts with" search for the front end.

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