Please help me test the new search engine!

[RickM]

Search looks to work much cleaner than before.


However, If I look up oxygen sensor I get a page that DOES show sensors, but not for 84 through 89. If I didn't notice the "Next 30 results" tucked away amongst alot of other info I might not think you carry them. In fact the search results only occupy a fraction of the page. Accessories, related tech forums, other sections and refine your search also occupy and compete for the space. While I think cross selling is an excellent idea ....IMO....I wouldn't offer it up until all the results of what someone is asking for are shown.

[RickM]

[47silver]

Wayne:
searched for fuel pumps found what i wanted no problems
gary

[siverson]

What about combining the forum search and web-site search so:

(a) the UI is simpler (I always accidentally try the web site search when I want the forum search)

(b) give you the opportunity to sell more. If I search the forum looking for how advice on how to install brake pads, or what brake pad is best, it would be interesting to also see what PP sells.

Or you could do that evil dynamic linking stuff and link any mention of Pagid or wipers, for example, back to a search on "wipers". Might be semi-annoying as an end-user, but might also be sometimes useful and also help monetize the forum for PP.

Just some thoughts - looks good so far!

-Steve

[Wayne 962]

Originally posted by siverson
What about combining the forum search and web-site search so:

(a) the UI is simpler (I always accidentally try the web site search when I want the forum search)

(b) give you the opportunity to sell more. If I search the forum looking for how advice on how to install brake pads, or what brake pad is best, it would be interesting to also see what PP sells.

Or you could do that evil dynamic linking stuff and link any mention of Pagid or wipers, for example, back to a search on "wipers". Might be semi-annoying as an end-user, but might also be sometimes useful and also help monetize the forum for PP.

Just some thoughts - looks good so far!

-Steve

Already there - just implemented that via the "search this forum" at the bottom of the listings...

-Wayne

[drophit]

I agree, the search is very hard to use on this site, too many results that do not pertain to the search, coming from 15yrs of PHP MySQL experience you def could improve the search criteria in order to more accurately look through the catalog, i fins it easier to drill down the sub-sections to find the part or most of the time i have to call to ask if you carry the part, and am usually directed to the right part that was not found by the search

[K.B.]

I don't really like the implementation in the "search this forum". I know when I'm looking for information versus when I'm looking to buy some new parts and the whole process is slowed down considerably when I am searching the forums for some info. (dang this dialup....)

But hey its your ballgame! I've seen plenty of times where people in the used parts forum were reminded that you had a part they were looking for in stock.

Ken

[Wayne 962]

Originally posted by drophit
I agree, the search is very hard to use on this site, too many results that do not pertain to the search, coming from 15yrs of PHP MySQL experience you def could improve the search criteria in order to more accurately look through the catalog, i fins it easier to drill down the sub-sections to find the part or most of the time i have to call to ask if you carry the part, and am usually directed to the right part that was not found by the search

I think that if you look into it very carefully now, you will find that the search results are very accurate. It's also important to make sure you're searching in the proper section (i.e. looking for brake pads in the early 911 section, instead of the later 911 (996) sections).

-Wayne

[drophit]

Maybe a check box to Search Parts should be added instead of defaulting to that option.

[Wayne 962]

Originally posted by LeeH
Me too. I was looking for the engine bay fuse cover. The search found the later model only - not the older version... but added a huge amount of other, unrelated items.

Hmm, I tried the same thing, and it gave me pretty good results. Of course, you have to remember that you can't simply hold the mouse up to your head and have it read your mind either. If you type "engine bay fuse box cover" from the 911 Forum, it knows (guesses) that you have a 911, but it can't know if you have an early or late one (996 included). So, it shows results from all years 1965-2005. If you need to refine your results, you can unclick the search criteria on the left...



-Wayne

[Wayne 962]

On a side note, I don't think the engine bay fuse cover is in our catalog, so it wouldn't show up either way...

Just trying to make it a little more intuitive...

-Wayne

[ianc]

Hi Wayne,

I don't know if we decided if the search engine is only searching for parts or the forums or both, but I too would love to be able to search on two character strings in the forums: H4, SC, RS, O2, CV, etc. Can that be changed?

Also, if it can be done, the search forum should default to the one you were in when you clicked search and not 'all open forums'.

Not sure if either of these can be done, but they would be welcome.

Regarding the parts searches, I was looking for CV joints recently, and didn't see the joints themselves listed, only rebuilt axles and boots. When I went through your wizard though, it listed the joints at around $71 ea. I didn't fully document my search terms, etc., but thought I'd throw that out there.

ianc

[joefrantz]

Wayne,

Here is one that I tried because I remember it being very hard to find the first time I looked for it.

I was looking for the little rubber mushroom shaped bushings that go on the rear (911) shocks.

If I remember correctly (its been several months) I couldn't come up with a description that worked, so I searched on the OEM number from PET.

That got me your number: c-333-521-00, which is the correct part.

Your description reads: "Rear Shock Mount Ring, 2 per shock, 912/911/911 Turbo (1965-89)"

Searching directly on your part number also yields the correct result.

However, searching on the string 'Rear Shock Mount Ring" yields two and a half pages of results, none of which is a Rear Shock Mount Ring.

Oddly enough, the first two items in the results set are "Rear Shock Mount Bolt" and "Rear Shock Mount Washer"

Joe

[asgi99]

I previously bought the 36mm ride height adjustment flat wrench from Pelican. It was a nightmare to find using search. I searched again with the following results,

1. search terms 'flat wrench height' = 1st result
2. search terms 'flat wrench' = 11th result on second page, some of the results on the first page were not intuitive e.g 'flat washer'
3. search terms 'flat wrench suspension' - hundreds of results, could not see it

Better than before but not perfect. Site search is a nightmare in my experience.

Do you do any Search Engine Optimization? Whenever I get Pelican results in search engines they seem to be for the technical articles which is not going to drive your revenue. If you have tens of thousands of links out there they are not going to surface to the top of the big search engines.

[Wayne 962]

Originally posted by ianc
Hi Wayne,

I don't know if we decided if the search engine is only searching for parts or the forums or both, but I too would love to be able to search on two character strings in the forums: H4, SC, RS, O2, CV, etc. Can that be changed?

Also, if it can be done, the search forum should default to the one you were in when you clicked search and not 'all open forums'.

Not sure if either of these can be done, but they would be welcome.

Regarding the parts searches, I was looking for CV joints recently, and didn't see the joints themselves listed, only rebuilt axles and boots. When I went through your wizard though, it listed the joints at around $71 ea. I didn't fully document my search terms, etc., but thought I'd throw that out there.

ianc

CV Joints seem to work okay now - it does come up with some axles, and then the CVs...

The two-word search is somewhat out of my control - it's a limitation of the board's software. The search program doesn't index any two-character words, in order to keep the speed of searching up.

The forums search should automatically search the same forum you're in at the time. The only exception is after you place a post - then the whole system doesn't get good feedback, and defaults to the whole forum.

-Wayne

[Wayne 962]

Originally posted by joefrantz
Wayne,

Here is one that I tried because I remember it being very hard to find the first time I looked for it.

I was looking for the little rubber mushroom shaped bushings that go on the rear (911) shocks.

If I remember correctly (its been several months) I couldn't come up with a description that worked, so I searched on the OEM number from PET.

That got me your number: c-333-521-00, which is the correct part.

Your description reads: "Rear Shock Mount Ring, 2 per shock, 912/911/911 Turbo (1965-89)"

Searching directly on your part number also yields the correct result.

However, searching on the string 'Rear Shock Mount Ring" yields two and a half pages of results, none of which is a Rear Shock Mount Ring.

Oddly enough, the first two items in the results set are "Rear Shock Mount Bolt" and "Rear Shock Mount Washer"

Joe

I checked this out - this is a part quirk. This part is in our database, but not listed in our catalog (thus can't be searched). I'm not sure why it was removed. I'll have the catalog team put it back in...

-Wayne

[Wayne 962]

Originally posted by asgi99
Do you do any Search Engine Optimization? Whenever I get Pelican results in search engines they seem to be for the technical articles which is not going to drive your revenue. If you have tens of thousands of links out there they are not going to surface to the top of the big search engines.

I disagree. There are tons of fly-by-night vendors out there selling stuff from their garages and apartments - all are trying to get top bidding for parts phrases.

Here at Pelican, we have adopted a longer-term strategy. By providing good, quality content, we drive traffic to our tech articles, which then feeds the catalog and this BBS. Our goal is to get people to bookmark our page and then come to it first, instead of searching aimlessly on the Internet. So far, the strategy appears to be working pretty good!

-Wayne

[Wayne 962]

Originally posted by asgi99
I previously bought the 36mm ride height adjustment flat wrench from Pelican. It was a nightmare to find using search. I searched again with the following results,

1. search terms 'flat wrench height' = 1st result
2. search terms 'flat wrench' = 11th result on second page, some of the results on the first page were not intuitive e.g 'flat washer'
3. search terms 'flat wrench suspension' - hundreds of results, could not see it

Better than before but not perfect. Site search is a nightmare in my experience.

The problem is that a lot of German automotive parts are not intuitive. For instance, all wrenches are flat, so it's a redundant phrase. You and I know the hidden context of your search (you want a wrench that is flatter than most), but it's nearly impossible for the search engine to try to read your mind, unless the search engine has been working on 911s recently.

One aspect of this search engine improvement is trying to figure out synonyms and similar phrases for items. For instance, the search engine recognizes "rotor" and "disc" as synonyms. Also, mispellings too, like "Boxster" and "Boxter". The trouble is, that even if you called up our sales rep, and told him, "I need the cover that goes on the front of the trunk compartment and is made of metal and cardboard" - he would have to think about that for a sec. There's almost no way to search for that item, unless you have some type of picture system like PET...

-Wayne

[Driver Ed]

It's definitely better, but I still have an occasional problem. For instance, I just searched for "hood shock retaining clip" (which I didn't think you actually carried!) and found what appear to be the right parts (which I will order!) but I got a strange artifact with the checkbox section on the left being much larger than it is apparently intended to be:



My box runs Linux and I'm using Mozilla. (It should show up in your access logs as "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.4.2) Gecko/20040308".) For what it's worth, I find that yours is one e-commerce site that consistently works pretty well with this browser and OS; I don't do business with ones that don't! Thanks for not using nonstandard Microsoft-specific stuff on the web.

Also, one small note about the forum picture upload function. On the entry screen, it says "Valid file extensions: gif jpg png txt zip bmp jpeg" but when I just now attempted to upload a png screenshot, it was rejected with an error message indicating that it only accepted jpg and gif, so I changed the format to gif and uploaded. Something's a little awry there.

[asgi99]

Originally posted by Wayne at Pelican Parts
I disagree. There are tons of fly-by-night vendors out there selling stuff from their garages and apartments - all are trying to get top bidding for parts phrases.

Here at Pelican, we have adopted a longer-term strategy. By providing good, quality content, we drive traffic to our tech articles, which then feeds the catalog and this BBS. Our goal is to get people to bookmark our page and then come to it first, instead of searching aimlessly on the Internet. So far, the strategy appears to be working pretty good!

-Wayne

If that's the case you could do URL mod rewrites on all the links out there to drive all traffic to your articles. SEO is getting very popular and there are a lot of companies out there working to ensure that their results get pushed to the top of the major search engines. If you are not leveraging all youe links eventually you are going to start getting pushed lower and lower on the search results. It can be a manual process to do the mapping but it's not rocket science and it would help guarantee that you are in the organic search results for any search query related to your product.