[thelist] SEARCHING: algorithms, techniques, etc. to get bettersearch results for users

Chris W. Parker cparker at swatgear.com
Mon Jul 8 19:06:01 CDT 2002


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steve Lewis [mailto:slewis at macrovista.net]
>
> > any ideas, suggestions, etc.?
>
> the search is spanning many DB fields: product name, description,
> keywords, etc... so weight some fields more than others as a matter of
> principle.  (# of occurances in title *4) + (# of occurances in
> description *1.2) + (# of occurances in keywords *0.6) or
> something like
> that.

this is exactly what i would like to do. how do i do that? what sort of
SQL statement would that be? if not an SQL statement, then what?

> How about adding a record-specific field for product weight (added to
> the weight of searches for instance) so marketing can have an easier
> time pushing a hot new gizmo model over an older model.
> (simply assign a
> higher product weight in the DB and voila it appears higher
> in the results!)

this is something i've already done. it's what i meant by the
"importance" field.

btw, i'm currently using access (yes i know, crappy) but we will
probably be upgrading to sql server in the future.


thanks a lot.
chris.



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