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links sql installed, search.cgi not....[fixed]

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links sql installed, search.cgi not....[fixed]
Hi,
I just got done installing links sql, everything seems to work in the admin panel, but when we go to our search.cgi script, and enter a keyword, in this example, zipcode, it can't find anything, yet we know that there is a site in the database with zipcode in the description field.

We tried copying and pasting different words from the description of the links, and it still finds nothing.

We have re-indexed the information, still nothing, we have validated, still nothing. We're apparently missing something here or have missed a step somewhere in installing it, since all else works but the search Im at a loss. It is the latest version 1.13 that we downloaded this morning.

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OKAY: Found out afterwards, that I need to set index weights to be able to search anything. So I set title to 8, url to 10 and description to 7. Now it finds results when searching.

So, what are other people using weights at, what do you weight your title, description and url at?

Thanks,
Harrison
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Re: links sql installed, search.cgi not....[fixed] In reply to
Search weights influence results. So if you have a 10 on description, and a 5 on title, then if a search matches the description, it will come up higher then if it matched the title.

Typical weights are:

Title: 3
Description: 1
URL: 1

But you are free to change it.

Cheers,

Alex

--
Gossamer Threads Inc.
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Re: links sql installed, search.cgi not....[fixed] In reply to
The weights are purely up to you. If you give a relative weight to different fields, different fields count more.

A '1' or higher means the field will be indexed.

The actual number is the 'relative' index value, such that you can make the title more important than the description, or keywords more important than anything, etc.

If you want each hit to count the same, give each field a 1.

I have my keywords set at 5, my title at 2 and my description at 2, with the long description at 1.

That way a keyword hit always out ranks the same sort of hit anywhere else, and it would take 3 hits on the title or description to outrank a keyword hit. It would take 5 hits on the long description to do the same.

If you want to search an address book, you just need to make each field '1'.

If you have a description but you want it linked to the zip code, you could make the zip code a 3 and the description a 2, so the zipcode has a higher rank, but a zipcode + description has the highest rank. You don't want the description to out rank a zip code. If you _do_ want the description to outrank a zip code ... ie: find all the "clothing" sorted by ZIP, you could make the description a higher priority.

It's just how you want the stuff returned on your site. If you want each word to count the same, just give each field the same value.

http://www.postcards.com
FAQ: http://www.postcards.com/FAQ/LinkSQL/