[jon-2]

Hello,

My client sent me the following email…

When I type in “Peoria, AZ” I get some AZ agents but also Houston, TX, Durham, NC and Toronto Canada agents. Not a robust search capability.

Is there a way to make the search feature work better? Paid extension, setting adjustment, etc?

Here is the page:
http://negotiationexpertise.com/mcne-agents/

[Steven Zahm]

@ jon

re: When I type in “Peoria, AZ” I get some AZ agents but also Houston, TX, Durham, NC and Toronto Canada agents.

That’s because the two letters are being dropped by the database. Most databased drop “short words”. The limit, generally is, three to four characters. The results you see would be for only entries which contains “Peoria”.

Well, there’s another two reasons… each word is searched separately so the results would be representative of entries which contain “Peoria” OR “AZ” (assuming AZ not being dropped). It can not be treated as a single word because the values are stored in separate fields in the database so each word is search for in each field separately. So, the search is actually fairly complex “erring” on the side of a wide results instead a narrowly focused.

re: Is there a way to make the search feature work better?

Yes. First, you can limit the fields that are searched on the Connections : Setting admin page under the Search tab. Second, you can try disabling the Keyword Search option.

Another option, try enabling the locality, region and postal code Permalink options. This will allow you users to filter by those. The related portions of the address will be comes links and when those links are clicked on the results will be filtered by what was clicked.

Lastly, a custom search option could be developed.

Hope that helps!

[jon-2]

Thanks for the reply Steven. My hosting said they DO support FULLTEXT, however the search does not work at all when I disable the “Enable LIKE query support.”checkbox. Is there another setting I need to adjust in order to make it work? Thanks

[Steven Zahm]

@ jon

Try disabling and then enabling the FULLTEXT option. If that does not work, can you please share your system info with me. You can create a temporary share link on the Connections : Tools admin page under the System Information tab.

[jon-2]

Thanks, I have never done this before. How do I securely send you access? Thank you

[Steven Zahm]

@ jon

re: I have never done this before. How do I securely send you access? Thank you

Here’s the doc page. Go to the Connections : Tools admin page and click the System Information tab. Scroll down and generate a URL by click the button. Copy the URL and reply back having pasted in the message. You can also check the “Set as private reply” option before submitting the reply.

[jon-2]

This reply has been marked as private.

[Steven Zahm]

@ jon

I suspect the tables were created with the InnoDB db engine which does not support FULLTEXT indexes in the version of MySQL installed on the server.

Log into the webhost’s control panel for your site and use the phpMyAdmin tool to check the table engine being used and if it is InnoDB, change the Connections tables to MyISAM. After you do that, then toggle the FULLTEXT setting in Connections so the FULLTEXT indexes will be created by the database.

Hope that helps!

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