If someone searches for ‘plumbers’ no results are returned but if ‘plumber’ is searched then the results show. Is there any way of configuring Simplesearch to look for plurals?
SimpleSearch just creates a normal sql query with LIKE:
WHERE ... LIKE '%plumbers%'
If the word “plumbers” is somewhere in the text it should be found.
If you want to be able to search for “plumbers” and find result that contain only the singular form “plumber” then you probably have to use the extra mSearch2 that implements a morphological search.
Thanks Harry - I think for the size of the site, it’s probably going to be easier to just edit the entries to include more keywords.
I will second what halftrainedharry stated about using mSearch2. We just added it to a site, it is a very nice search tool. I have only spent a few hours working with the extra. I was able to improve the relevancy rankings, speed, configure autocomplete, and add some faceted filtering. Then you add in the ability to see all queries on the site and configure synonyms. The synonyms will allow us to view common search terms and match to our built in controlled vocabulary. I believe it will help you with the plurals as well.
Roy
hey @rdegler any chance you can share some guidance or examples on how to use msearch2?
I just purchased it - which was a bit of a challenge in itself given the language barrier and my banks refusals to send money to Russia it seems.
The docs seem basic if not rough via translation, but none of the simple examples give me ANY results whatsoever. Not sure how I can even get it to output results.
Thanks
Scratch this - figured out you have to build your index first in the extra’s settings before it will generate results. My bad.
@robcarey I sent is help ticket to the developer and got a quick response (next day due to time zone difference).
I would be glad to exchange ideas, I was working on the mFilter2 snippet to create faceted filters. I will likely start on that again.
Roy
@rdegler Thanks Roy - I’d love to see whatever you’re willing to share in regards to faceted searching. A good search has always been a challenge so I’d love to see how others approach and improve,