Hey guys -

I was doing some test searches on my site, to try and get a gauge of the overall search functionality on my site. I would search for something simple like "audio mixer", and I was getting crazy results including tubas, dj lights, and many other things.

I was trying to pin down what was causing these crazy results, when I stumbled upon this sentence in the smith cart online manual.
"Smith Cart provides the ability to enter additional product search keys that are searchable from the product listing page search box. This is useful if you would like to have products searchable on words that do not show up in the product name, sku, summary or description or they can be used for product associations or common misspellings."

I checked the descriptions on these products, and sure enough, I had a small text blurb about the brand below the product information, that contained the keywords triggering the random search results.

I was sitting here trying to justify in my mind how having the search module include terms from the product description would be beneficial. I suppose setting it up this way would be a sort of "catch all" to those random search terms people think up, but in enabling this catch all it distorts every search - including the specific ones whose results should be strait forward.

From my perspective, I would have to "walk on egg shells" every time I write a product description, to be sure I don't include a word that would trigger a negative search result. I would also have to review the description of every product on my site, and scan for keywords that would also trigger negative results.

To be honest, I don't see why having the search module use keywords from the product description is necessary. In my particular case, having the product name, sku, summary, and the ability to specify any extra search terms on a product level is more than enough. Anything beyond that would only muddy the results.

I don't know if there is anyway for my current install to have the search functionality set up like this. Even if not, I wanted to suggest it to you guys.

Alex