How does the Search Work?

The search facility allows users to search your website, and ranks the results in order of relevance, in much the same way as Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves etc. When the user performs a search, the website returns results for content pages, product categories, and products, displayed in order of relevance to the search term.

How are the results determined?

For product categories, the system checks to see if the search term is found in the name or description of the product category.

For products, the system checks to see if the search term is found in the name, manufacturer or description of the product.

For content pages, the system checks to see if the search term is found in the content search index.

How does the search index work?

When you create, edit, or delete a content page, the system updates the search index. Each word on the content page is assessed and assigned a value of how important it is on that content page.

When the user enters a search term, the system checks the search index for each word in the search term. It then displays the names of the content page for which those words are considered most important.

Taking this content page as an example, when it was created, the system decided that the word "search" was very important because it is found in the page name, the main page heading, and at several other points in the text.

How is the importance of a result worked out?

Result importance is determined by using the following table.

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Position of search term	Importance
Content page name	36
Product category name	32
Heading 1 on content pages	28
Product name	26
Product manufacturer	26
Heading 2 on content pages	21
Heading 3 on content pages	15
Heading 4 on content pages	10
Heading 5 on content pages	6
Product category description	6
Heading 6 on content pages	3
Product description	3
Bold text on content pages	2
Normal text on content pages	1

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