The Default Magento search provides irrelevant results, is there any other option?

[Laura Cioclea]

Magento search is totally useless results! My clients may search for the exact product name but the search returns about 100 results (some of them have nothing to do with the product at all!)

is there any replacement for default Magento search? I heard about Solr integration. Is it worth doing? And how expensive it will be?

 

[zigojacko]

The default Magento search will check every field in the product for mentions of any of the keywords used in the search query, in any order. It is largely useless.

There are much better alternatives but there are also some things to try within Magento first...

Firstly, you can modify each attribute in Magento so that it is not used to search for the search query, setting attributes to be used in quick search and advanced search means that every time a search is carried out, all these attributes will be searched for mentions of the keyword (like below screenshot).

If you want to make the search stricter, try setting all these attributes settings to 'No' for use in quick / advanced search apart from the product name. This will improve your search results vastly based on the example you provided.

You can also modify the default search flexibility between three settings Like, Full Text and Combine. You can set this from your Magento Admin at System > Configuration > CATALOG > Catalog > Catalog Search.

Try changing this to Full Text and Combine and see how your results differ (be sure to reindex before testing after each change).

 

[Raw Rob]

There are much better alternatives...

Would you mind telling us what you think are the best alternatives. I don't think the built in search will work well for my site.
thanks, Rob

 

[zigojacko]

Would you mind telling us what you think are the best alternatives. I don't think the built in search will work well for my site.
thanks, Rob

It really depends on what you require from Magento's search. You may want to check out these search extensions though Rob.

One of the most popular and one that I know works well is Mirasvit's Sphinx Search Ultimate.

 

[Laura Cioclea]

Thanks for the advice @zigojacko I'll definitely check those tools!

Also, I have searched Magento Connect for search extensions and found Search Suite by Mageworx. The product page is rather messy but from what I manage to understand is that the extension is fully integrated with Solr and Sphinx, and has its own search engine.
Anyone tried it?

And what do you think of Solr Bridge Search? The feature list looks impressive, the price is quite high though.

 

[zigojacko]

Unless you have a very complex store with hundreds of thousands of similar products, there is unlikely the need to but a $450 extension for a search functionality on your website.

Again though, which extension is best for you is down to your individual needs and may not be the best for another Magento store.

 

[perpixon]

I use this one from Activo on my main site basically it changes the search form an "or" to ans "and" works straight away without any setting up nice and simple. i haven't tried any others to compare.

 

[Amasty]

Hello all!
Laura, you can also check out our extension Search Pro. It makes search results more relevant as it lets specify search priority for product attributes. Moreover, you can choose the search type – ‘like’, ‘fulltext’ or ‘combined’ and add autocomplete feature.
Hope that helps

 

[Deleted member 106254]

I use this one from Activo on my main site basically it changes the search form an "or" to ans "and" works straight away without any setting up nice and simple. i haven't tried any others to compare.

I second this. Use this extension a lot. You also need to change the search type to LIKE though.
As Zigojacko says you can also refine which attributes are included in the search too.

 

[acornia]

The most accurate is Solr which has up to 98% accuracy depending on extension, there are others such as Sphinx/Lucene but these are less accurate. Sql search is the least accurate in most cases.

 

[dx3webs]

+1 for Sphinx ideal for most small - medium sized sites.

 

[Toni Anicic]

Also note that Magento's default search can be heavily fine tuned. You can literally set which URL to return for each individual search query someone enters. So if you don't have a lot of products, you might even be able to point most of the search queries manually to the most relevant result.

 

[arunthomas203]

I would suggest Sphinx. It is just awesome and the support team is so helpful.

 

[buildmeashop]

We find Klevu search to be really good. It does auto-complete, the search results are relevant and nicely formatted and it's free for the basic version, which works fine with most small shops.

 

[AntoineR]

We did tests using search suite by mageworx and better store search by sweet tooth. Both extensions showed quite relevant results and fast search. However our client picked the first solution because it integrates the sphinx and provides some sales stats.

 

[MageWorx]

is there any replacement for default Magento search? I heard about Solr integration. Is it worth doing? And how expensive it will be?

Laura,

thanks for your comment about our extension page on Mageno Connect. We will do our best to upload a new, more informative version of it today.

As for your question about our Search Suite extension, yes, it's fully integrated with Sphix and Solr search engines. On top of that, we have also developed our own search engine - xSearch that is designed to calculate the product weight for each search query.

By the way, have you tried the extension? What are your thoughts on it?