This topic describes a good starting strategy to try if you are a retailer working with a catalog data set.
The strategy assumes the following:
The search mode is MatchAllPartial. By using this mode, you ensure that a user’s search would return a two-words-out-of-five match as well as a four-words-out-of-five match, just at a lower priority.
The strategy is based on a search interface with members such as Category, Name, and Description, in that order. The order is significant because a match on the first member ranks more highly than a cross-field match or match on the second or third member. (For details, see "About Search Interfaces").
The strategy is as follows:
The modules in this strategy work like this:
NTerms, the first module, ensures that in a multi-word search, the more words that match the better.
Next, MaxField puts cross-field matches as high in priority as possible, to the point where they could tie with non-cross-field matches.
The next module, Glom, decomposes cross-field matches, effectively breaking any ties resulting from MaxField. Together, MaxField and Glom provide the proper ordering, depending upon what matched.
Applying the Exact module means that an exact match in a highly-ranked member of the search interface is placed higher than a partial or cross-field match.
Optionally, the Static module can be used to sort remaining ties by criteria such as Price or SalesRank.
