localhost testing

[teedoff]

Hi I have indexed my site succesfully and can find results when I perform a search. The problem is that when I set my base URL to my remote LIVE site results show up for both my local site and my remote site. In other words a search for 60k19dl results in the following:

http://localhost/mysiteName/www.replacementlightbulbs.com/lamp60K19DL.html

AND a second result for my live site as follows:

http://www.replacementlightbulbs.com/lamp60K19DL.html

I also noticed, I think, that when I just indexed my site again, it seemed to have indexed the files twice over. I dont know what I changed other than I had created thumbnails earlier and created a folder for them. Thats why I reindexed my site.

What would cause this to index my local files AND the remote site as well? Any sugggestions or help would be appreciated! I looked through the documentation but didnt find anything useful to resolve this.

[David]

Hard to be sure without looking at your configuration file.

But one possibility is that you have defined 2 (or more) start points. On the "Start options" configuration window there is the "more" button. If you click on this button do you see a separate start point for both your local site and live site?

Anther possibility is that you are using the "Rewrite links" option in the "indexing options" configuration window and you haven't set the right values for the rewrite.

Another possibility is that you are using incremental indexing and have incrementally added the pages from the live site to the local site.

Are you using offlline mode or spider mode?

[teedoff]

Im using offline mode at the moment for testing purposes. I think you might have pinned it. I may actually have two separate starting points. Im not at work now, so I will check that in the morning. Thanks!

[teedoff]

ok Yes I did have two start points, and even though they pointed to the same bas URL, I deleted one and that seems to have resolved the issue. Thanks for your help!

[teedoff]

One other issue I have, and this may be an issue best resolved from my end. If I search for a product like "60k19/dl" that works fine.

In my indexing options under indexing word rules, I have the Slashes checkbox checked, simply because the site owner used slashes in alot of his product names.

Now when users come to the site and use the search feature, if they dont include the slash, it doesn't return any results.

I tried it without the slahes checked as well which works for "60k19", which is anything BEFORE the slash. But the problem there is if they include the slash they would get no results.

My question is, is there a way to set filtering options of cases like this. For instance, could I filter all shashes from indexed words so that searches like
"60k19", "60k19dl", or 60k19/dl would all work?

Again this may be something I should resolve on my end. I have expressed my concerns with his naming convention, and will be addressed in the future. As there are literally thousands of product names to change, this might be a huge job in itself.

Any suggestions or points in the right direction would be greatly appreciated.

[David]

Using a slash in product codes probably wasn't the best decision.

Assuming product codes are the main type of searches done on the site I would turn on the slashes check box (so "60k19/dl" is treated as a single word and not 2 words). But then I would add meta data to each page
<meta name="KEYWORDS" content="60k19, 60k19dl, 60k19/dl">
If the site was database driven (e.g. SQL/PHP) then this meta data could be produced in an automated fashion by the script. Probably just 1 line of PHP code.

[teedoff]

Yes I agree about the slashes. That will be and is being corrected from this point on. As you mentioned about the meta keywords, that is probably the way to go. I would have thought, as thorough as he has been for keywords and mispellings of keywords, he would have actually had several variations of "60K19DL" in there. He doesn't, so this may be the best solution I would think.

Unfortunately, this isnt a dynamic site..lol soo things like this would have to be added a page at a time.

One other thing we're running into is that he named his files with either the word lamp or the word bulb in front of the actual product name for every html page. So I assume the search results arent actually using the file names to pull from, but rather page titles and content. Anyway, thanks for the help!

[David]

File names, titles and content are all used (if this is what you configure).

If the product code is always in the title then you could write a script to automatically extract the part number in all files from the title and add meta data.

I tried it without the slahes checked as well which works for "60k19", which is anything BEFORE the slash. But the problem there is if they include the slash they would get no results.

Just thinking about this more. This should have worked. If slashes are not joining words then a search for 60k19/dl should find pages with both the text 60k19/dl and 60k19.

For example, here is a search with a slash on our web site,
http://www.wrensoft.com/search.php?z...ry=kb%2F904056
The search was for "kb/904056" and this was correctly found on page,
http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/support/faq_cgi_iis.html
as it contained this text on the page,"Here is a Microsoft KB article which provides several solutions. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/90405"


So you might want to try this again.

[Ray]

Just thinking about this more. This should have worked. If slashes are not joining words then a search for 60k19/dl should find pages with both the text 60k19/dl and 60k19.

I had the same thought. It should have worked with slashes disabled for joining, and searching "60k19/dl" should match all the above, except for the one case where you actually have "60k19dl" on the page (note: no slash or space separating "60k19" from "dl"). Is this what was actually on the page and why you thought it didn't match?

[teedoff]

He actually has 60K19 and 60K19/DL and 60K19dl all somewhere in the page. I dont know why a zoom search of 60k or 60k19 didnt work. I am leaving today, so I will investigate this all further tomorow. Thanks for the help guys!

[Ray]

He actually has 60K19 and 60K19/DL and 60K19dl all somewhere in the page. I dont know why a zoom search of 60k or 60k19 didnt work.

Well, I would know why "60k" wouldn't match. Same reason why you wouldn't want "cat" to match "categories" or "free" to match "freedom" because they are very different things.

Partial (or substring) matching is generally not desired (although end users often presume it could be magically determined when something should partially match).

You might want to consider advising people to use wildcards. "60k*" would match any of the above. More information on wildcards and search syntax can be found here:
http://www.wrensoft.com/zoom/support/searchtips.html

[teedoff]

Yes I agree about why 60K would not work. I actually think now its working pretty well. In fact, its working as good if not better on most searches than the advanced google search he has currently on his site.

Thanks for all the help!