Misspellings and Synonyms Searching

[lesliekirk]

What is the best way to include misspellings and synonyms in product searching (that doesn't involve using Custom Product Fields).

[Rick Wilson]

This is one of the reasons we've built Vexture, you don't need to include or plan for those. They just work.

[lesliekirk]

This is one of the reasons we've built Vexture, you don't need to include or plan for those. They just work.

The store owner sort of needs it now as he is trying to move from SearchSpring to the native Miva search. (And it has not been easy).

[ILoveHostasaurus]

If you do not want to use custom fields, or third party search, or wait for the product we're releasing that would solve this specific problem, then the remaining options would be:
1) come up with every possible misspelling and synonym for every consequential word, in every product, and put them in the description hidden from humans. You'd have also needed to do this work for custom fields too of course. Then keep doing it every time any product is added or updated.
2) Ensure the site is as AI-bot friendly as possible, and adopt one for use as a site search. e.g. ensuring semantic html and structured data for every product, optimized AI readability (not JS and not image-based), alt tags on images, meta tags, then run a crawl simulator against it.

[lesliekirk]

If you do not want to use custom fields, or third party search, or wait for the product we're releasing that would solve this specific problem, then the remaining options would be:
1) come up with every possible misspelling and synonym for every consequential word, in every product, and put them in the description hidden from humans. You'd have also needed to do this work for custom fields too of course. Then keep doing it every time any product is added or updated.
2) Ensure the site is as AI-bot friendly as possible, and adopt one for use as a site search. e.g. ensuring semantic html and structured data for every product, optimized AI readability (not JS and not image-based), alt tags on images, meta tags, then run a crawl simulator against it.

I've already mentioned it to the client. He's signed up for the beta. He's got until September before he has to make the move. This gives us time to figure out why the update to Shadows 10.12.02 is breaking a critical (to him) portion of the PROD page layout.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

[QUOTE=ILoveHostasaurus;n724482
1) come up with every possible misspelling and synonym for every consequential word, in every product, and put them in the description hidden from humans..[/QUOTE]

If you have a field (such as product footer) that is unused. Wrap the template call with <!-- --> so client doesn't mess that part up. (Learned this the hard way.)

[alphabet]

Wait for AI Search or ...

Add synonyms to page title tag or a customfield and then add spellcheck to input tag.

Check search logs for high priority typos and synonyms.

<input type="text" id="mySearch" spellcheck="true">

spellcheck attribute will only indicate typos with a dashed underline but user can still submit it.

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Not a bad idea...but of course they also need to do the seat/seats thing.

[lesliekirk]

Wait for AI Search or ...

Add synonyms to page title tag or a customfield and then add spellcheck to input tag.

Check search logs for high priority typos and synonyms.

<input type="text" id="mySearch" spellcheck="true">

spellcheck attribute will only indicate typos with a dashed underline but user can still submit it.

While not a bad idea, we are dealing with almost 10,000 products that would need to be tweaked or have some sort of custom field populated. The store owner is extremely frustrated (as I am too) that the default search cannot find something as simple as "brake pads" even though every product for them has just "brake pad" in the name and description. He was hoping to be able to save money by dropping SearchSpring...

[Rick Wilson]

I believe we could save him money vs SearchSpring using Vexture, email me and we can discuss details.