Search crawling too broad of an area

[katiepbussey]

Hi, all! We are nearing launch and I've run into an interesting search results issue. Search is treating phrases as individual words - so if I search cat and mouse, it will return results with the word cat, results with the word and, and results with the word mouse. In my past experiences, communities would not surface results based on conjunction only, or articles. Any ideas on how to bypass these common, at times meaningless, results?

[VarunGrazitti · Accepted solution]

@katiepbussey  - The default search in Lithium would not give you any control over the indexing and how the search should be treated or what results should be returned. However, with some recent updates, they do have boosting of results available, https://lithosphere.lithium.com/t5/Li-Blog/Introducing-Promoted-Search-Boost-content-in-community-se...

however, not sure if this solves your purpose or not. There are also some Search solutions available which could give you complete control over your search and include the results from other sources as well. Let me know and I will send you a PM.

I hope this helps.

[JasonHill · Accepted solution]

@katiepbussey 

It's also probably worth noting that Lithium recognises that search currently needs improvement and has refinement on the roadmap. 

We find on Workshop that members have been trained by Google to search using sentences and that Lithium doesn't cope, preferring keywords. For example, searching How to fix a hole in the wall? is more likely to present a post entitled How do I fix a hole in the bathtub than How to repair cracked walls.  

Until Lithium improve search, educating your community members on how best to utilise the search engine might be your best bet. 

All the very best with your launch.

Jason