[thelist] Ranking search results

Chris Houston. chris at phosphors.net
Wed Sep 13 04:12:01 CDT 2000


Steve Cook typed:

> has anyone got links to some examples of how to program ranked search
> result queries? I know this is a really deep field, but it's the base
> concepts I'm looking for.
>
> Currently I can perform a search and get results sorted in various ways
> by my SQL statements, but how do I for instance, count the number
> of search terms in a result and then rank the results accordingly.
>
> I imagine some heavy programming ahead!

Just to refresh the topic because I see no-one's taken it up, I'm also
really interested to see how this is done. Anyone ever had any experience
doing this?

I've been thinking about it, and the only thing I can think of is to get
multiple record sets back from the database and then rank them. The problems
are:

1) If you're looking for 3 search terms across 5 fields you'd get need to
get 15 record sets back.
2) Items showing up multiple times must be reduced to one item with a higher
ranking.
3) This really should be done in SQL.

Chris Houston.

Creative Director
Phosphors Intermedia.






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