Searching for records with text and using standard titles - unexpected results?

It seems to behave like in this forum search. I always wondered why I it is hard to find my OWN topics and what is the best way to enter search term(s). Personally I am used to enter multiple words (up to 3). But in this forum, it leads to strange or inaccurate results.

My first thought was to enter group multipe words with "" e.g. "my multiple search terms" I think this pattern is not used or recognized by Cobalt search. Apparently Cobalt treats it as a single word, including the "" as additional characters?!

At least in this forum, I seem to get better results by using + and - in front of your words. e.g. +multiple +search +terms

Did you try +/- in your setting?

Otherwise...,
you might set the search mode to %LIKE% and repeat your tests. That may find all 3 words as a matching "phrase".

Related link

Documentation - Fulltext search

@ Sergey

BTW, here is a "strange" result in this forum. Even with a single search term. Should it really work this way, or do I search and think different ;) ?

Hi,

Thanks pepperstreet for your advice ...

I set the search to %LIKE% and got these results ...

the - YES

the three - YES

the mariners - NO

three mariners - YES

mariners - YES

mariners three - NO

mariners the - NO

three - YES

three the - NO

the three mariners - YES

It's a little bit more true to what I would expect, but still not good.

On a general public access website it's not reasonable to expect users to add + or - in search terms ... users are simply not used to thinking that way generally. Do they do this in Google? Nope.

Warm regards,

Dale.

techutopia On a general public access website it's not reasonable to expect users to add + or - in search terms ... users are simply not used to thinking that way generally. Do they do this in Google? Nope.

Yep, agree with you.

I have spent a lot! of time with Cobalt and his pre-decessors, but funnily enough, I did not use or test the search field in depth. Otherwise I would have made a lot of similar posts ;) I always liked the "Filters" and "Count". I personally hate to enter something in an input... it is like "guessing"... not searching. (at least without an AJAX suggest feature)

What can I say. MySQL fulltext search is applied here. So the whole proces of finding matches are there. What tit returns, Cobalt shows.

Hi all,

Here are the results with adding a "+" ...

+the - NO

+the +three - NO

+the +mariners - YES

+three +mariners - YES

+mariners - NO

+mariners +three - YES

+mariners +the - YES

+three - NO

+three +the - NO

+the +three +mariners - YES

It may be conincidence, but the shorter queries seem to be worst? (but maybe I'm just reading something into it)

I thought a solution may be to 'force' the +, but then I thought "What happens if a user types in a word that isn't there?"

Here's a couple of tests ...

+the +three +mariners +bob - YES

+the +three +mariners +pepper - NO

Note that neither 'bob' or 'pepper' are in the record, but one works and they other doesn't?

This is way over my head. :-)

Thanks,

Dale.

Your last comment has really strange results ;)

techutopia +three - NO

Confirmed :( Any single search term with "+" shows no results!?

techutopia +the

Not 100% sure... but i guess short and unimportant words are not added to the index at all. e.g. and, or, the, not etc. At least they are not considered as "relevant".

Hi all,

Would anyone be able to suggest a 'hack' to make searching better?

I really do not like hacking cobalt at all, and have not done this yet, but 'search' working with keywords better (or rather, in a way the user expects) is a 'must have' for me.

Thanks you.

Dale.

May be you just set in configuration LIKE search. This way it will not use fulltext index and search wilt LIKE '%something%'.

Thanks Sergey.

I did do this already (please see comment above - reference 14 Aug 2014 23:14) - the results that I got are still not what a user would expect I think.

Ta.

Dale.

@all

I think the whole Cobalt text search needs to be refactored (Sorry, Sergey) It works fine in titles only, but is unusable in full text searches (there's no real logic in the results)

Search Alternatives

1. Google search - accurate and fast
2. Joomla's smart search - also accurate and fast + auto predict list BUT although all words are indexed, selecting a word from the list are sometimes false positives
3. Ajax Live Search - accurate and fast + image support + fun to use

The main reason to use Cobalt text search, is that it produces a filtered list. Combined with other filters, it is indeed a powerful search/filter tool.

If only Cobalt could use Joomla's smart search to find records for text searches, but I'm afraid that's science fiction ;-)

Hi all,

I eventually got rid of the search box on the main menu bar - as it didn't work as expected.

I then installed the filter module and turned on the keyword search ... and got much better results!

the - YES

the three - NO

the mariners - YES

three mariners - YES

mariners - YES

mariners three - YES

mariners the - YES

three - YES

three the - NO

the three mariners - YES

So, I can only assume that this search works differently.

Hope that helps someone,

Warm regards,

Dale.

techutopia I then installed the filter module and turned on the keyword search ... and got much better results!

Interesting!?! I thought, it has exactly the same features and functionality? @Sergey Any ideas?

Hi,

Could this be something to do with a mysql setting? I noticed that shorter words are more of a problem, and found this ... do you think I'm onto something?

"The minimum and maximum lengths of words to be indexed are defined by the ft_min_word_len and ft_max_word_len system variables. (See Section 5.1.4, “Server System Variables”.) The default minimum value is four characters; the default maximum is version dependent. If you change either value, you must rebuild your FULLTEXT indexes. For example, if you want three-character words to be searchable, you can set the ft_min_word_len variable by putting the following lines in an option file:

[mysqld]
ft_min_word_len = 3

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/fulltext-fine-tuning.html

techutopia do you think I'm onto something?

Absolutely. This is waht fulltext indexi is. that is why parameters starts with ft_.