How search results are determined


	How search results are determined
	Last Edited - 08/27/2012 3:55pm PDT
	Category Path - Shopping Cart Software Components > Storefront > FAQs & Tutorials

You may be wondering how the products included in the storefront's search results are determined. This article will explain how the storefront determines which products to display — and the order that they're sorted — when a search is performed.

How is the order of the Search Results in my store determined?

Unlike other locations in the storefront, the products listed in the search results are not displayed in alphabetical order or by the product's Display Order. Instead, the order of the Search Results is determined by a weighted score.

How is the weighted score of the Search Results determined?

The search engine checks for occurrences of each of the words in the phrase being searched for that are three or more characters in length.

tip: search phrase vs. search words

If a customer searches for the phrase colors of shirts, then the search engine will check the products in the store for occurrences of both colors and shirts. The two-character word of will be ignored.

Note: If the search phrase is encapsulated within quotation marks, then the entire phrase will be treated as one big word. For example, if the customer searches for the phrase "colors of shirts", then the search engine will scan for instances of the entire phrase colors of shirts.

During the search, several of the product's data fields are scanned for the presence of each of the words in the search phrase. Each time the word is found in one of these fields, the "weight" of the result is increased. The higher the final weight, the higher up in the Search Results the product is listed. Certain data fields carry more weight than others.

Which fields are scanned during a search, and what is their weight?

The following fields are scanned by the storefront's search engine:

Product Name. Weight: 6
(Every occurrence of the word in the Product Name increases its weight in the search results by 6.)
Product Keywords. Weight: 4
Product's Part Number. Weight: 2
Product SEO-Friendly URL Text. Weight: 2
Product's Short Description. Weight: 1
Product's Long Description. Weight: 1

Targeting products for certain search phrases

The weighted system provides control in determining the placement of products in certain search results.

For example, My online store sells shoes and shoe polish. One of the products is named Saddle Shoes. A certain brand of shoe polish, Hi-Gleam, is specifically made for use with saddle shoes. I want the Hi-Gleam shoe polish to appear immediately after the Saddle Shoes product when a customer searches for the phrase saddle shoes in my online store.

If I edit the Hi-Gleam product in my store and add the text "saddle shoes" to the Keywords field, then then the following results will occur when a customer searches for "saddle shoes" in my store:

The search engine will run two scans in my store's product database. The first for the word "saddle", the second for the word "shoes".
The word "saddle" is found in the Name of the Saddle Shoes product. The product's weight is increased by 6 in the search results.
The word "shoes" is also found in the Name of the Saddle Shoes product. The product's weight is increased by an additional 6, for a total weight of 12 in the search results.
The word "saddle" is found in the Keywords of the Hi-Gleam product. That product's weight is increased by 4 in the search results.
The word "shoes" is found in the Keywords of the Hi-Gleam product. The product's weight is increased by an additional 4, for a total of 8.

Search Results will list my Saddle Shoes product first (with a weight of 12), followed by the Hi-Gleam shoe polish (with a score of 8).