Search History

You can find this section under Search > Search History in the IRP Admin left navigation menu.

This page displays all the searches, both successful and unsuccessful that customers have conducted on your website. You can see details such as the customer's country, language, platform, IP address and date searched. This feature is a good way to find out which countries are searching for which products, or what your most popular products are. You could then adjust your marketing to cater for these searches.

Here are some examples to explain how the IRP Search system works.

• When a site visitor enters a search term, the IRP makes a first pass at matching every word that has been entered against brands, categories and models. If it finds matches, the results are displayed on the SearchResults.aspx page on the front end (and on the SearchHistory.aspx page for Admin Users).
• The IRP also uses the Word Replacement functionality at the start of the search process. Say, for example, a site visitor enters the term ‘long sleve‘ in the Search bar on the front end of your website. As you can see, this is a mistake as the visitor meant to type ‘long sleeve‘. They then click the Search button.
• If you have not set up a Word Replacement for ‘sleve‘ then the IRP will let the visitor know that no results were found.
• However, if you have set up a Word Replacement for ‘sleve‘, the IRP will transform the incorrect term into the correct term and then run the search checking brands, categories and models for any matches. The IRP will then show the number of results to the visitor.
• If the site visitor enters a string of words in the Search bar (let’s use the same example as above, ‘VR Pro Cavity’, the IRP will first examine all three words for a match, then two words and finally one word (assuming that you have enabled the Enable Search Combinations Application Setting). The IRP will then display the results. These are called ‘combination results’. So, in our example, the IRP first examines:
  1. ‘VR Pro Cavity’ — if the IRP finds matches it will display them. If no matches are found then the IRP moves on to examine combinations:
  2. ‘VR Pro’, ‘VR Cavity’, ‘Pro Cavity’ — if the IRP finds matches it will display them. If no matches are found then the IRP moves on to examine each word individually:
  3. ‘VR’, ‘Pro’, ‘Cavity’ — if the IRP finds matches on any word, it will display the results.
  4. If no matches are found then the IRP displays the message ‘There were 0 results for VR Pro Cavity’.

Note that the 404 'Not Found' page will be displayed if a user conducts a 'blank' (or 'empty') search and has an IP address that has been detected as a crawler. This is because crawlers conducting blank searches is an expensive operation. If the user is in fact not a crawler, you can unblock their IP address. See Block IP Addresses for more information.

There are several Application Settings associated with the IRP Search feature. These are in their own section under Application Settings > Search in the IRP Admin left navigation menu:

• Enable Predictive Search: Check this box to enable the predictive search feature within the search bar on the website’s front end. As the customer types in the search bar, possible results are displayed which the customer can then select with their mouse. You should also then make sure that you:
  • Add and activate the ‘Rebuild Predictive Search Index’ Common Task. This allows you to automatically rebuild the Predictive Search index repeatedly at a defined time interval, or executed once at a specific date and time.
  • Reload the Predictive Search Index under Application Settings > Reload Settings so that any updated values appear in the predictive search box.
  See also the ‘Number Of Predictive Search Results To Cache On Client’ and ‘Number Of Predictive Search Results To Show’ settings described below.
• Enable Search Combinations: When a search fails, the IRP uses this setting to determine whether to look subsequently at the best possible combinations of the search terms. For example, if a customer searches for ‘VR Pro Cavity’ and no results are returned in the product name or category, the IRP will then will check for ‘VR Pro’, ‘VR Cavity’ and ‘Pro Cavity’ together. If they also return no results, the IRP looks at single search terms. This setting should be enabled by default. You could possibly disable this setting if the search feature is running slowly due to the website having a large number of products.
• Enable Search Quick Filter: Check this box to show a ‘Quick Filter By’ drop-down list at the top of the SearchResults.aspx page (the placement of the list also depends on whether the ‘Show Attributes On Left Nav’ Application Setting is enabled).
• Number Of Predictive Search Results To Cache On Client: This is where you set the number of search results to cache in a customer’s browser. These are predictive search results that will not be obtained from the server.
• Number Of Predictive Search Results To Show: This is the number of predictive search results to show in the search bar when a customer is typing a search term.
• Search Minimum Search Term Length: This is the minimum length that a search term can be in order for the IRP to perform a search. Any search terms that are shorter than this will not return any results. When this value is 0 then the results returned include all products in the IRP — this could potentially be a huge number of results depending on how many products you have in your inventory.
• Include External Stock ID In Searches: When this is enabled, customers can search for stock items via their External Stock ID. If a match is found, the customer will be directed straight to the product detail page. As the External Stock ID will usually match a SKU in a third-party system, you should enable this setting only if you think that your customers will know the value of these. Note that, for Trade Site searches, enabling/disabling this setting will be reflected only when you rebuild the Search Indexes. You can do this via the 'Bulk Operations' page in the 'Products' section.
  Note also that customers can search for Models via their 'Model External' value (if these have been set on the ModelsEdit.aspx page) which will be added to the Search Index when it is rebuilt.

You will also see the following settings in the ‘Search’ group of Application Settings. These are not applicable to all IRP clients but are included here for completeness:

• Enable Stock Search Hash Hash Prefix: This setting would be applicable only in specific situations, for example if part code numbers overlap with Stock IDs. If you check this box, customers can search for Stock IDs by typing ## in the search box followed by the Stock ID. For example, if a customer wants to search for a Stock item with ID 12345 and this setting is enabled, they would have to type ‘##12345’ in the search box.
• Part Code Search Pad At Beginning Of String: This setting would be applicable only in specific situations. The value for this can be either 1 (box checked) or 0 (box unchecked):
  1: The search term will be made up of [Part Code Search Padding String] + [Search Term]
  0: The search term will be made up of [Search Term] + [Part Code Search Padding String]
• Part Code Search Padding String: This is the string to either pre-pend or append to the Part Code Search Term.
• Part Code Search Pad To Length: This is the length of the padding to either pre-pend or append to the Part Code Search Term.

There are two Common Tasks associated with the IRP Search feature:

• Rebuild Predictive Search Index: As described above in the section about enabling Predictive Search (see ‘Search Application Settings’), you should add and activate the ‘Rebuild Predictive Search Index’ Common Task in order for the Predictive Search feature to work. This allows you to automatically rebuild the Predictive Search index repeatedly at a defined time interval, or executed once at a specific date and time.
• Rebuild Search Index: As models, brands and categories are added to or removed from the IRP, the search index must be rebuilt for these to show or be hidden in search results. The search index speeds up the website and search elements on the website.

The SearchHistory.jpg page appears as follows:

You can use the search bar at the top of the page to find any searches that you have configured in your system. You can use the filters under the Search panel to:

• Group the results by search term
• Filter by specific countries (as selected by the customer using their country settings)
• Filter by specific languages (as selected by the customer using their country settings)
• Filter by Desktop or Mobile platform

All Searches tab

You can see the following information in the main grid:

• ID: This is the unique ID of the search term, generated by the IRP. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Term: This is the search term itself, as entered in the front-end search bar. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Country: This is the country selected by the customer using their country settings when they entered the search term. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Language: This is the language selected by the customer using their country settings when they entered the search term. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Platform: This is the platform used by the customer (Desktop or Mobile). You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• IP Address: This is the customer's IP address. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Result Count: This is the number of results that were generated after the term was searched for on the front end. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Date Searched: This is the date and time when the term was used in a search query on the front end of your website. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• View: Click this button to view and manage details for the search term. The SearchHistoryEdit.aspx page will then appear. For more information, see How to View Details of Individual Search Results in this section.

Successful Searches tab

You can see the following information in the main grid:

• ID: This is the unique ID of the search term, generated by the IRP. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Term: This is the search term itself, as entered in the front-end search bar. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Country: This is the country selected by the customer using their country settings when they entered the search term. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Language: This is the language selected by the customer using their country settings when they entered the search term. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Platform: This is the platform used by the customer (Desktop or Mobile). You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• IP Address: This is the customer's IP address. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Result Count: This is the number of results that were generated after the term was searched for on the front end. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Date Searched: This is the date and time when the term was used in a search query on the front end of your website. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• View: Click this button to view and manage details for the search term. The SearchHistoryEdit.aspx page will then appear. For more information, see How to View Details of Individual Search Results in this section.

Failed Searches tab

You can see the following information in the main grid:

• ID: This is the unique ID of the search term, generated by the IRP. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Term: This is the search term itself, as entered in the front-end search bar. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Country: This is the country selected by the customer using their country settings when they entered the search term. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Language: This is the language selected by the customer using their country settings when they entered the search term. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Platform: This is the platform used by the customer (Desktop or Mobile). You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• IP Address: This is the customer's IP address. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Result Count: This is the number of results that were generated after the term was searched for on the front end. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Date Searched: This is the date and time when the term was used in a search query on the front end of your website. You can click the heading to sort the grid in ascending or descending order.
• Add Redirect: Click this button to go to the SearchRedirectEdit.aspx page. See the Search Redirects help topic for more information.
• View: Click this button to view details for the search term. The SearchHistoryEdit.aspx page will then appear. For more information, see How to View Details of Individual Search Results in this section.

At the top of page you can see these buttons:

• Failed Individual Words: Click this button to go to the SearchFailedIndividualWords.aspx page. See the Failed Individual Words help topic for more information.
• Ignored Words: Click this button to go to the SearchIgnoredWords.aspx page. See the Ignored Words help topic for more information.
• Search Redirects: Click this button to go to the SearchRedirects.aspx page. See the Search Redirects help topic for more information.
• Word Replacements: Click this button to go to the SearchWordReplacements.aspx page. See the Word Replacements help topic for more information.
• Rebuild Indexes: Click this button and then select one of the following options:
  • Predictive Search
  • Search Index